Seasons adjust to axis and latitude;
we practice solstice rites whose sun
turns away on the promise of return.

Modern magi, we search the sky
for manifest miracles, metaphors
in stardust and cosmic mystery.

Autumn’s feast is eclipsed by heaven’s
debris; winter whispers its epiphany:
time bends heaven toward a creche.

Your days link in iceless whiskey,
smoke-rings from discount cigarettes.
Folk wisdom reveals a remedy
for drunkenness is raw owl eggs,
nailing up owl’s wings wards off lightning.

You sleep while chicken fries,
in an cast iron skillet and wake,
as flames rise from the char, fly,
talons open, in a flurry of curtains.

Pursing lips against a blur
of all that might have been,
you take my arm to climb
the slope behind the shed.

I move some clay and stone,
we pot the plants from friends
because, you say, someone
will see them bloom one day.

Our embrace is final, even feral,
more in support than letting go;
Your frame a swaying lotus stem
bearing its enchanted blossom.

We stand, ungraceful dancers,
wait for God’s distant do-si-do,
so you can whirl into heaven,
as I turn from your little-girl
grin and invitation to follow.

How expectant lyrics fade;
where each trace of allusion
and delay at enjambment
collude to say you are gone.

The tug of war between lines
leaves behind misplaced caesuras,
aborted silence of parenthetical
moments, hearts apostrophized in
distance, dissonance, and disconnect.

Hear this poem’s murmured metaphor,
its breath in hesitant, panted intervals,
its divisive stanzas, gorged on implication,
asserting promises whispered in ellipsis . . .

be swung in a sling, given wings,
flung to some Philistine’s face,

cracking cranium, breaking brow,
creating chasm wide enough

to ponder the power of pebble
launched in prayer, mumbled verse,

ancient mantra turning toy to weapon,
sacred chant transforming boy to man–

sheer poetry in motion:

stone
        palm
                string
                         psalm
                                   sting
                                           bone.

Living becomes the geometry
of influence; dying, the physics
between holding on or letting go.

At the axis of bone and marrow,
where blood counts begin and stop,
only fractions of humans remain.

Blind man in a white shirt,
bolo tie, dress shoes, puffs
a cigar stub, waving a wand
to match his crisp cadence
and patent leather posture.

Women urge their mothers
arm-in-arm around the promenade,
purses swinging in late afternoon.
Children play among ancient shrubs.
Men on benches knit their narratives.

Shutters make shadow wings
on yellow and salmon stucco.
Beneath sheets and lingerie,
phrases linger above slate streets
pocked by commerce, pageants, warfare.

In upturned hands in outstretched prayer,
innocence is proffered to a famished will.

And God is breathing all creation in obesely,
taking back the gift to every mother given.

Her tacit shriek, silent hallowed shout,
a grimly veiled and barefaced request:

Don’t let this humble sacrifice be pleasing, and
to his cradle grave she bears her blameless babe,

All she has to give for all she has been given,
a never ending end where everything’s forgiven.

Earth dims to darkness
like a faceless conversation;
frozen explosions ascend,
ghosts of prayer and dreams.

Here, I embrace the expanse of you
while a rainbow flattens into gold.

A raving insomniac God is craving rest,
if only creation could pause without ending.