Easter
By Ace Boggess
Statewide Lockdown, Day Twenty
Slight banging outside this morning like rain on tin,
a woodpecker jamming its beak into ductwork.
Three taps, four, then three again.
I look around, see nothing of meaning,
no neighbors bashing the broken world
with hammers, squirrel feet
sending coded messages.
Noise could come from anywhere,
a mystery, voice in the wilderness:
Thou shalt live.
*
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.