Procession (Anathema Maranatha)

A Poem by Seth Wieck

Procession (Anathema Maranatha)

Route 66/Interstate 40, Groom, Texas, pop. 549

Once or twice each March and April, this mist 
marches into the roadside town of Groom
where stands in steel the nineteen-story 
monument the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
On usual clear plain days, the cross looms—
a white obelisk with an obelisk beam—
against a sky the painters call bice blue.

For nearly thirty years, one saw it first
driving West—the long shadow dialing East
like a Roman clock. America’s mother
road prostrate below the corpseless cross, alone.
The level grasslands stretched far away.

For the last three years, a legion of windmill
turbines have laid siege on the plain. Each stands head
and shoulders above the Cross of Our Lord and Groom.
It’s not hard to see displayed on those three blades
a hand and second hand and pierced feet, spinning.

Hundreds of windmills like thorns round the horizon
have crowned our ground and ground our ever-living wind.
More gruesome than Romans we’ve machined
crucifixes where sorrow and blood don’t 
flow mingled down but out, out, out.

Once or twice each April Groom appears out of the mist.
From the sconce of fog, the sun’s trimmed lamp glows through
this gloom and isolates the town’s long interstate view.
Each blade ascends and vanishes into
the brow of clouds then falls, plunging mist down
on the dead land with a long, low whoosh of wind
then rises, rises, rises and is received again.