Our Father Jacob

Our father Jacob, on the beaten track,

carries a ladder on his back

like a window washer to the VIPs.

He does God's windows, if you please.

The ladder is all that's left of his dream;

the angels finally ran out of steam.

He carries the ladder back every night

into his dream and out of sight.

At dawn he wrestles a man to the ground.

That man is a woman. They roll 'round and 'round,

roll till they're ravished, till both of them reel,

grasping at chest and crotch and heel,

day after day, by the first morning light,

till the angel and Jacob are too weak to fight.

He'll climb that ladder, if ever he dies,

right out of this world and into the skies,

till the world vanishes into thin air.

For all that we know, he's still climbing there.