--- J E N N I F E R   S N E A D

						He moved among us, as a muttering king,
						Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
						Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
						With heaven, brought such requital to desire
						The very hinds discerned in it, a star.
								- Wallace Stevens


Hardly complacent, the day unfolds quickly, cusp
of the work-week.  Would you make of it, poet,
a long slow dwelling, contemplating flesh and spirit,
the earthbound fullness of sense and the spires that pierce it,
skyward towards heaven?  Go ahead, combine them;
the book lies there still, unopened on the shelf.
Everyone is out running errands, crossing items
off of lists.  This partakes of ancient paradox, pagan Xeno
and his halfway point, progressing ever toward the end
of the line, ever the same distance left to go. 
Quotidian yearning.
An infinity of tasks.  
The dark encroachment of Monday even now,
at dawn when, the stone rolled back, the wounds all healed,
the winding sheet rumpled on the rockhard floor, he woke 
and stepped blinking into the sunlight, to the gasps 
of the waiting watchers.  So much left to be done.