Eighth day

Hanging behind the cellar stairs: finally,
he rested. But on the eighth day, God thought better of it
and made possible the tenderest of thefts:
that of milk-white bones plumbed by the heavens
and dug up for the grief-stricken to see.
For all, God said: Let there be light
where there is dark.
Let there be truth in an empty sea—but once,
answers in their absence.
And so the angels were given the most vigilant of tasks
to part, on only a moonless night, the grass-covered
dirt of graves. (For how else in this circumstance can love
be shown but with a desire for morbid things?)
And by taking in the rotting skin—and eyes that escape
their sockets like spools of unwinding thread:
Let each prepare to emerge from the earth,
carrying as firewood—skeletons: to hasten speech.
So that muddied and draped in lilies,
with still-blind eyes amok in plea—Look, God will say
Did you not know the stars are your grandfather’s
bones strung as letters in the sky?