SALVATOR MUNDI

by David Radavich

Where are the words
that could save
the world?

That could sing
out of pain

or resurrect death
like a daffodil?

I see the sun rise up,
the moon, as if

no one had suffered,
no jobs had been jerked,

surgeries botched,
wives beaten,

children abandoned
as limp dolls.

The murderers,
the plutocrats, the liars

rise again
like mushrooms
after the rain

and yet

this family of deer
stand momentarily
alongside the fence

eyeing
their options

before the neighbor’s dog
barks like Cerberus

and they
scatter into green.

 

Published in The Countries We Live In (2014).