Canon, by John C. Mannone

Canon
    at the marriage supper

A choral progression
Pachelbel’s Canon in D
polyphony of angelic voices
singing the same psalm--
     Holy, Holy, Holy
—each entering in sequence
with the Lord God Almighty
Who’s singing too
in basso continuo,
His Holy Spirit repeating
the same two-bar line--
     Worthy is the Lamb
     Who was slain.
And the everlasting trees
by the riverbank sway
to His aeolian wind, Ruach,
waving the branches
    to the Canon—to the written word
    to the canon—to the music in D,

the beautiful sound of creation.

Adam must have heard
somethng like that symphony
in his heart when God formed
his wife. And the man said,
     Bone of my bone,
     flesh of my flesh.

He was so empty, so incomplete
before then, but he didn’t need
a reason to believe or to feel lonely,
yet he did, even when God walked
with him in the cool of the garden.

But there’s always a snake
in the grass to uncoil
that perfect union. It tried

to constrict the innocent
lamb, swallow him as well.
But the serpent didn’t see
    the mother’s hooves,
    the father’s teeth.
The Lamb of God
    wouldn’t lie down
        except for us.

For us: the man, the woman,
all of us—the church.
No church is complete
without a lamb on its altar.
It used to be by the blood
of bulls and goats filling
the cisterns and chalices,

but now, it’s the Lamb
who will marry to the Church.
And the bridegroom said,
     Bone of  my bone,
     flesh of my flesh.

So what
about my sack of bones,
my pound of flesh?
Why am I so special?
Afterall, I am nothing
but dust…

And before I could finish
the sentence, a voice lifted
out of the music, growing
louder in my soul, until
it shook my heart with
these words that He said
to me, they—Elohim--
said to me in sequential
harmony,
     But you, my love,
     are my very breath.

John C. Mannone

John C. Mannone has work in Blue Fifth Review, NEJM, Intima, Amsterdam Quarterly, Peacock Journal, Gyroscope Review, Inscape Literary Journal, Baltimore Review, Pedestal, and Pirene's Fountain. He’s been awarded Weymouth writing residencies (2016, 2017) and has three poetry collections: Apocalypse (Alban Lake Publishing, July 2015), nominated for the 2017 Elgin Book Award; Disabled Monsters (The Linnet’s Wings Press, December 2015) featured at the 2016 Southern Festival of Books; and Flux Lines (Celtic Cat Publishing, Spring 2017). He’s been nominated for several Pushcart and Rhysling awards. He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other venues. He teaches college physics near Knoxville, TN. Visit http://jcmannone.wordpress.com