PRODIGAL

Everywhere, all over, mothers have wept

into their nightgown sleeves, hoping

not to wake those who slept beside them.

Cleave blood from blood and time will bleed.

Let us believe again in waxen wings,

titanium-ribbed, that can bear the sun

and never fail. In apostolic things—

Lazarus lifting his matted head

to sing the blossoms in, loaves and fishes,

rain in times of drought, species

that do not wink out one by one like stars. 

Medea’s kids sung to and snug in their bed,

truth in the news. The world intact in a bead

of dew, and—bound fast again to me—you.

Rebecca Foust's books include God, Seed (Foreword Book of the Year Award winner and Mass Book Award finalist) and All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song (Many Mountains Moving Book Prize winner and nominee for the Poet’s and Paterson Prizes). Recent poems are published in Hudson Review, JAMA North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Sewanee Review, Tikkun Daily, Women’s Review of Books, and other journals.