Had it not been spring

By Stephen Sexton

The moral of the story I don’t know, but in the end the fifty sovereigns were safe in the magpie’s nest, and the farmer wasn’t murdered by the soldiers.

God in the spit and tinsel of the nest, or the secular magic of coincidence— something kept the hundred-eyed regiment staring in its legacy of footprints.

Yes and yes—more than nature loves the meek, nature loves their stories. The king’s army killed and was killed, the farmer is long in his paradise.

And since its whole bright sprawl is gold: parking meters, kerbstones, sewer grates, the spell of it is broken by abundance. Heaven’s gold is thoughtfuls of earth.

Remember mutable textures of dream, the first glimpse of the gates, refugees stripped, keening widows scraping soldiers’ boots for dirt where beyond prayer they pray something grows?