Uncle Silas
by Cooper Esteban
Let your wandering holy man
Share his god's manacle
With any manner of kin
He can, but I will
Bide confinement here and await
The angel who splits the vault
And shows me the gleam
Of the next Jerusalem.
Followers of Rabbi Saul,
We waded the same dry fords
As anyone, till St. Paul
Broke the sweet bread of words
And called that prestidigitation
The Lord's affiliation.
But I have seen the jailer's eyes:
The malice of the mother
Who gives her child to another
And takes a thief between her thighs.
Cooper Esteban's new and selected poems, tentatively entitled "Mosefolket," will appear from Ravenna Press later this year.