January 2020
Betsy Mars
marsfish@aol.com
marsfish@aol.com
Author's Note:
I have a bone (or a few) to pick with G-d. I suppose this poem is my attempt to come to some
understanding or to come to terms with the sometimes cruel and seemingly random events that occur
in our lives. I have recently published an anthology, Unsheathed:24 Contemporary Poets Take Up the Knife,
which was a direct result of my being part of this community, and I am forever grateful for the friends
and fellow poets who I have met and befriended as a result of V-V.
Noah’s Ark
After Charles Reznikoff
Where are the dead of the flood
who missed the ship
who lost their grip
who were not picked
to go below the rainbow’s arc?
Where are the dead of the flood
the ones who swam, the ones who float
in indigo waters beyond their depth,
beneath our vision, begrudged their breath—
their souls unbodied,
mortal bonds broken—
where are the dead of the flood?
Their bones become reef,
their grief unsanctified—
where are the dead of the flood?
Where are the goats and the hens
who sank, blown down on the whim of God?
No burial for them in a fine linen shroud
or in a matting of reeds.
Below God’s butcher block
a sea dyed red—
there are the dead of the flood.
"Noah's Ark" was originally published in Panoply.
©2020 Betsy Mars
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It is very important. -FF