In a year of horrors of which no one needs particulars

that might nudge the loss, grief, fear, and pain up

from the shallow graves of memory like knobby

leg bones after too much rain,

we are plunged into the heretical sea of duality,

in which the ceaseless love of the Holy One is paired

not with its opposite but its absence; grace to graceless,

blessing to indifference.

All is salt; tears shed and wounds abraded, tongues

blistered on the draft of goodbyes unsaid, while the

conjoined twins, Doldrum and Maelstrom, reel above

splintered keels of capsized dreams.

Who is the Jonah with his duffle of sin, that brought this

godless wrath upon us?  Whom shall we pitch to the deep

in our stead, to wedge between the gnashing jaws

lest they snap shut upon us?

Look to the eyes of all for the flickers of guilt and virtue,

especially our own, then raise the howl of contrition

for the clay-footed idols we’ve made, every

one of them shod in our shoes.

©Dana Hughes 12.28.20