Jane Zwart

The Charge of the Light Brigade

FOR JOSEPH KNOL

I thought of my uncle in his coveralls climbing from the pit,
pictured him rewiring one last asps’ nest in the rafters,

a roof that rolled into place again and again, and then I saw
the ceiling peeling away, the bar chain chassis lifting easily, a lid 

from a tin of sardines. I pictured him, my uncle, the mechanic,
hoisting himself up, a digger from a grave, a lifeguard

from a pool. A work light dangled from a loop at his hip
by the metal curl at its crown, and my uncle pulled himself

from an oiled room into the wider dimness, into fields
where only the bulb glowed and only the cord it trailed

was orange. My uncle—what is greater than an uprising
but less than resurrection?—leapt up, unhooking a scoop

of light from his jumpsuit, and ran, breaking incandescence
across that landscape like one breaks news—

what is the diminutive of gospel?—while, behind him, a troop
of cadets, too young to enlist, kept adding length to the cord.

 

Black and white photo of woman in glasses smiling at the camera

Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also codirects the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her book reviews have been published in Plume and in Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the coeditor of book reviews for Plume.

 
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