Christ the Bridge

Christ the Bridge

Alone once in the stream of clay,
Gasping tender breaths above the lapping.
And the dragon, dripping, wound about the tree, 
Attributing its fall to wanton locks
Until it dried and took its desert way
To dusk among the cedars' fragrance.

Then there swelled a sacrificial fragrance 
As flood returned the flesh to clay.
Hardly had the bark got underway
When all the word of water was the lapping 
Fraught with cancer's drift amid the locks 
That billowed with the cubic tree.

The far-off spar took up the bundled tree
And mounted to the fire's fragrance
Licking at the lank, long-promised locks.
The screaming cheek was raised from altar clay 
While other blood beat thunder out to lapping 
To let the cuckold take his hallowed way. 

Now the traitor lost his wilder way
And caught his skull upon the sweeping tree. 
Iron stalked the great oak’s grasp, iron lapping, 
Smiling the savor of the desperate fragrance. 
No weeping half-relieved could turn the clay 
Or comb the wrath away from severed locks.

But drunk with love of little as a lock
The potter held the wheel's eternal way 
And spread his indiffusion through the clay. 
The hammer beat the roses from the tree 
Which dripped a holocaust of fragrance
To seven soldiers' circlet lapping.

And when the dead descended to the lapping, 
Teasing out the thorns from dripping locks, 
There rose the sweet sub-Templar fragrance, 
Steeping blood to supervise the way
That struck a sweet undoing from the tree 
To set a stair for souls of clay.

And we are lapping toward the tendered way,
Straining sips from locks along the tree, 
Surrendering our fragrance to the clay.