PEGGY SHUMAKER
Deliverance
after Chagall
What kind of Moses
would arrive in the form
of a rooster tall enough
to brush his comb
along the doorjamb,
his arched back
a feathered saddle
iridescent, not with sweat?
One roll of his red eye
and this unrepentant woman
mounts up, clings to wattle
and tendon, leans her ear to his beak
to catch each triangular
syllable tremulous as dawn.
Her doubts burrow
deep into down, she strokes
veins at the base of his throat,
feels the faint tick of faith
just out of reach.
The silty creek of her mind
cannot yet float
that rowboat where some tiny god's
giving one of the chosen
a free ride to the other side 
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