The Religion of Want
written by: Douglas John Imbrogno
@TimesClimate
I
How hard it is to dream,
to dream well. Besieged by
wants, missing what’s not
there. Wanting what we
cannot have, or could, at a
high cost of misery.
On the old bedroom wall,
painted the between-blue-
and-green of a robin’s egg,
Christ the Lord, not my
saviour, maybe yours,
pleads into a beam of
moonlight or perhaps
it is the flashlight eyebeam
of his distant father.
There, in the Garden of
Gethsemane, where so
many problems for the
world began. Pleads for
release from his
obligations, pleads for
strength to carry on?
Pleads for his eternal life
(yet isn’t that an oxymoron?)
II
Anyway, panties on the
bed refract a man’s attention
to more secular aims, the
religion of want, a complex
cosmology, in its own right.
The baseboard heater ticks
and clicks to life, like a
bebop piano player, tuning
up. The half-slice of moon
the color of provolone
dodges in between the
scattered clouds
above the dark hills of
West Virginia, this cool
October night. Here
comes the fog, in the
dips of the road, concealing
the world from itself.
- Zinnias - June 18, 2024
- Something for Nothing - March 1, 2024
- War Clouds - November 4, 2023
