John Sibley Williams

CONFESSIONAL HYMNS


Bless us, fertile new morning.

Bless the barrage of tangerine light
streaming through the thawing pines.
Bless the slight wisps penetrating within
these bedroom windows,
balancing upon her forehead.

To whoever misses the conch’s hermetic ocean voice
grinding and honking down the avenues,
bless those ears pressed to concrete
who know history never fully unfurls.

Bless the gathering hummingbirds
who resuscitate night’s lost shadows,
swarming into a single crab
splayed across our bedroom wall,
legs furiously kicking the air.

Bless the beasts conquered and belly up,
accepting without pretense the slaughter and their breath.
Bless all the things each sea coughs up.
Bless their ignorance, their well-lit tree within.
Bless the bountiful cold waves
sleep polishes our wounds,
our nightly flight taken with Icarus
and our awaking moments before the sea opens its mouth.

Bless the moment between waking and understanding,
when such purity of new morning blinds us
to what the night undid.

John has an MA in Writing and has recently returned to the Boston area, where he frequently performs his poetry. He is presently compiling manuscripts composed from the last two years of traveling and living abroad. Some of his over forty previous or upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, Cadillac Cicatrix, Juked, The Journal, Barnwood International Poetry, Phantasmagoria, The Alembic, Clapboard House, River Oak Review, Southern Ocean Review, Miranda, Language and Culture, and Raving Dove. "Confessional Hymns" first appeared in Flint Hills Review.