Thirty-Six

Music: Erbarm mich dich, O Herre Gott.
By Heinrich Bach. Sequenced by David Cooke.

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Thirty-six is an island in a river
Halfway in between two distant shores.
In childhood, the bank is rich with flowers,
Receding hills, hot fields, and long, slow hours,
Thick old trees, wry words, and open doors.
Yet on the opposite bank white aspens quiver,

Song birds flit like gems through windswept bowers,
In distant mountains thunderheads deliver
X-rays of our dark, unsculpted cores.