Apologetics II

A grand parade of horses, tigers, birds—
the circus streams to town, a motley share
of creatures nuzzling near; goats and goatherds
no longer on the cliffs. From everywhere

they come: the wolf howling as wolf, the hare
eager to race as hare—its fur, distinct.

The sun haloes each head, while the extinct
dodo remarks, snug in God’s remembrance:
I’m still your notion, Lord—forever linked
to unicorn, and elf, and a pearl’s circumstance.

Sofia M. Starnes, Virginia Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014, is the author of six poetry collections, including The Consequence of Moonlight. Some of her more recent poems can be found in Image, First Things, the Bellevue Literary Review, and Christianity and Literature. Sofia is currently working on a collection of dizains, a recasting of this fifteenth-to-sixteenth-century poetic form. She lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, with her husband, Bill.

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