MICHAEL SANDLER

Sacrilege

Prescribed fresh air and in need of new belief,  
I hike a hinterland—and happen upon 
a congregation of rue and black-eyed Susans. 
They seem remote, monks swaying to hymns  
only they hear. Shunned, I uproot one, 
twirling it so its florets face me, the woods,  
the heavens, but its stare appears mundane. 
I feel no gathering in of the sacred— 
or does an eco-liturgy escape me? 

The evergreens beyond nearly as cryptic: 
babble of root, incoherent boles and bark, 
the needles on the ground like runic script. 
Perhaps my child-self would have fathomed this— 
too long ago for absolute belief. 
Faithless, I gawk at a cedar’s knot, 
a moss-rimmed eye, wood-witness unsurprised 
I find no rapture in this sacrament: 
gold-threaded sun shafts annotating the pines… 

Sunset. Better tend to secular needs: 
tent pegged, brush gathered, a shallow hearth dug— 
my cupped hands lower a profane spark  
to ignite a twig: a restive blaze unsheathes 
a cindered sword, a stick I could wheel toward  
the sky’s violet rotation into night— 
as if the threat might fend off a decree 
pronounced by the gloom’s rustlings and howls. 
Instead, I wait… 

till a breeze disturbs a spirit in the fire 
at my feet, projecting flickers over columned  
bark and upward to the forest height, 
rippling through my elongated shadow 
as rapid water would to a reed or rush— 
but it doesn’t cleanse me of an uprooting 
or of wanting to flee—and yet I can’t depart, 
my projected figure dancing in the cedars. 

Michael Sandler is the author of the poetry collection, The Lamps of History(FutureCycle Press 2021). For years, Michael wrote poems for the desk drawer, while working as a lawyer and later as an arbitrator. He began to publish in 2009. Since then, his poems have appeared in scores of journals including Arts & Letters, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Zone 3. Michael lives near Seattle; his website is www.sandlerpoetry.com.