Noelle Kocot

Palm Sunday, 1998

A thought interrupts. A draggy river

Runs under a cloud of power.

There will be signs, all right. The Giver

Of time and anecdote splits the hour

Into years that hone

Their edges on the edges of a rumor.

Words wait to be filled, as if they could

Digest their meanings' absences

Without the call of being loved or understood.

And yet, even now, there is no sense

Which doesn't end in an unfolding

On the loud map of the soul. The miracle then?

The remote slate of a gravestone, sprinkling

The grass with pardons, or the skin

Seaming the scar of a knee into pink plastic?

The sea roars and tosses like a great plant

In ecstasy that warms the morning

And emerges eternally from an instant.