This Year of Jubilee

by David Hunter Sutherland

          "di culpa e di pena"

Next year I plan to plant only integers,
long stalks of healthy digits whose missing fingers on hand
will be a greater omission!

This year the unexpected majority; housewife, businessman,
farmer with aging schedules and past accounts
held no space to reserve it, no cupboard to hold it.

Slippery for centuries their draws filled a fraction of the day,
greased itself with lanolin and cremes then left behind
a millennium with the sunscreen and keys.

I head off down I-84 with coffee in hand, cross lanes
as the un-walling of an overpass screams its graffiti "Mars or Bust".
Let its simple words take rearview seat,

Watch the walls of East and West suburbia fall (shalom darling shalom)
head home tonight with the hope that next year's harvest
grows peace, goodwill, all hearts and palms.

Recent pieces by David Sutherland have appeared in The American Literary Review, The Hollins Critic, The Northern Michigan Journal, The Reader (Oxford University), The Cortland Review and The Midwest Quarterly. Recent awards include a Pushcart Nomination, and he has a second collection scheduled to be published by Archer Books / Cadmus Editions later in 1999. Finally, he serves as managing editor for a not-for-profit publication called "Recursive Angel".