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Ursa Major
J. Stephen Rhodes

You will be lonely some night,
awake in your bed, the usual chorus
inside, only this time one animal
in your chest will break her chain,
the one you’ve held in your hands too long,
the one your father handed you,
that his father passed on to him.
Then, that great bear you’ve been feeding
gruel will claw her way into your heart,
and you will have to choose
between her and the cacophonous choir
who sing of the ever-ascending way,
laurels, pilgrimages, and other things undone.
Look into her eyes. Is she not the promise
you saw at your birth but could not understand
of wilderness and doubt, forests
and cold nights under the canopy of stars
she oversees? The chorus will never cease
their chant, nor will they ever forgive. But she,
while tearing open your heart, can break
the chain so that you, at last, can sing.

—
J. Stephen (Steve) Rhodes is Canon Poet of Grace Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. He is the author of four poetry collections: The Time I Didn’t Know What to Do Next, What Might Not Be, They Speak Your Language, and Was That You Boss. Before taking up writing, he served as the co-director of the Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center in Berea, Kentucky, the Academic Dean at Memphis Theological Seminary, and as a Presbyterian pastor in Georgia and Kentucky.

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