Page 62 - WTP VOl. XI #1

Zach carpenter
Out of the Dead Land
Thinking of T.S. Eliot, Good Friday, 2022
All the churches were closed.
The Pope prayed alone.
Playgrounds were taped up like crime scenes. Nobody was going to the movies.
The TV burned like a fireplace
in every living room.
Time waited like a mouth.
What a strange trip we were on
(and are still on). Remember?
Like everyone else, I desperately wanted
things to return to normal, as I sat at the table
to write something, something powerful, something hopeful.
And in those moments,
I remember listening to the landscapers
outside my apartment, trimming everything
to near perfection.
Now and then, they would stop
their buzzing machines and yell
something in Spanish,
breeding new flowers
out of the dead land, while the silent ghost of God continued to slowly die on the naked Cross,
for those of us who survived, and those of us who would never make it.
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Carpenter lives with his family in New Mexico, where he railroads (as an Amtrak conductor), writes, and is currently at work on a novel.