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Forgiveness as the Last Compassion

After Christ of the Abyss, a submerged statue by Guido Galletti, off the coast of San Fruttuoso in the Mediterranean Sea 

Across the sea, a sculptor
            plunges his bronze Christ 
down a forgiveness
            weighed heavy with barnacle, 
tempts me with the mercy
            of a place that didn’t already 
know you—
            where crying is no longer 
spectacle but simply
            another warm current 
across the molten wound
            of love. In the left-behind 
of my people’s
            sacred geology, 
zebra mussels scathe 
            engines and drag 
ships
            toward rocky bottoms, 
taconite uneasy
            in the ballast—trapped gas 
in the gut of industry.