A Game of Chess in Black and White

Poetry

A Game of Chess in Black and White

Kathleen Lyons, csj

Volume 37  Issue 7, 8 & 9 | Posted: October 9, 2022

Black and white chess isolated on white background

While Knights upon the chessboard of salvation
Do endless battle with the threatening black
The dualistic paradigm of light and dark
A moralistic, fatalistic bent
Black is Black
White is White
No shades of softer grey
No puzzling ambiguity
Or challenging ambivalence
Dark is dark, light is light
No hazy in-betweens
No dawn, no dusk
No holding these in tension of the opposites
Just eternal separation
A razored split, a schizophrenic gap
Provides convenient myth
For patriarchal domination
And makes a mockery of God’s eternal plan

   

Kathleen Lyons, csj