With this cross we stake our claim
Raise our stone god
on the now broken land
The river which poured us
hungry, fierce across the prairies
Now lolls at our feet
One arm of this cross
Thrusts west
Peaks impregnable
now train-tracked
traced in children’s colouring books
The other arm aims east, shoots
the nodding heads of ghostly herds
Pumpjacks pawing the dead
In Christ’s rotunda chest
Grey stone pillar ribs
a bagpipe heart, mourning
The Legislative Chamber
his belly and bowels
Forever voided of grace
Great hallways, once arteries, veins
rich with flowing spirit
Now conduits for cold-blooded calculations
No real cross, trembling
with sacrifice’s import
with blood, pain, transcendence