Veronica In A Tube Top Poem by Shannon Walker

I saw the weaving grass,
And how it didn't snap
Off at the bottom was
A mystery to me;
Then fly across the bare
Clay and through the black trees,

And of the screaming trees
And their place in the grass,
Whose grimace such a tear
Across the widening gap
Of fabric, the thin reality
That I never could trust,

They alone knew the dust,
Bloody up to their knees
Was the clay from which she,
Our first Mother, held mass,
And made the red skull cap
Such a trophy to wear.

Her long cascading hair,
And soft touch still outdoes
Anything God could slap
Together on the seas...
A ship in Venetian Glass,
Far removed from Galilee,

That image of Divinity
Still hanging in the air.
Oh, if I could only pass
With no less stir or buzz
Than a prince from the Chaldees,
And with a thunderclap,

Through her arches and lap
Nectar from that Holy
Tree...worship on my knees,
Have my part in the tear,
That now and ever was,
The softest pale trespass

To ever come and pass
Across this arid trap,
And wet the tongue that was
Hot for the Holy Tree,
I'd die at her feet and stare
Across the centuries

At that beautiful tree
And the tear that tore us
From this monotony...
Oh wonderful Eve.