Across a Dark Canvas

God, thank You for the beautiful butts 
in Your Word snapped my head 
left and right from the liturgy
to note I’m the only one delighting 
in the rumps of the Lord. Once, 
when the famous poet spoke
to my students about a poem 
made of lines without stanzas, 
she called it, Stichic, and I heard 
and wrote in my notes, Stick it,
thinking of a closet where a person 
might shove things, then of sticks 
flinging themselves upwards
and reattaching to tree limbs.
And there’s a kind of magic
in latching these thoughts together, 
no space between them,
letting the synapses spin 
like a student high-stepping
backwards through dogwood blossoms 
to a mysterious beat in her earbuds.
When my youngest was four I heard 
Daddy, I’m dying! and from the hall 
saw the iPad in her hands, thought 
she’d found her brothers’ games and 
was losing. Until I crept closer
and saw the screen, its lines swoop
and rainbow. She’d been saying, drawing
and I heard dying and for a moment
it’s not the earth or my older daughter’s grave
or what will happen to me and everyone
I love, it’s the two merged, whorls
of light and color across a dark canvas.