On the eve of something from long ago I walk out into a beautiful storm, the trees bend leaves and branches–freshly laundered linens, a veil, a dress, a comforter to keep us
to words once and always
eternal
Batidos on the Via Argentina
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Category Archives: grief
Mending the Dragon
“These scales are remarkably hard to pierce,” I said to the wee brave patient as I tried and retried to reattach the wing, each stitch through layers of bright, obsidian scales
never made a sound
never whined or complained
This the cost of flight
and restoring what has been lost for so long
Naming Strays
Darling, it should
Come as no surprise to you
I have rescued each of these from something
So shall we name them–downfall, downfall, downfall, downfall, downfall, downfall
or indelible redemption
Remedial Botany
I neglect to tell the children
Why It was I had to
trim the tangled branches,
Cut, unbraid the predatory vines snaking scars into the flesh
Of these ever watchful trees
I should have rescued long ago
Little Lanterns
I will send you a million, million
Little lanterns
Rising points of light
from the same lit flame
Each inscribed with the story of how I lost you
How could I have lost you
When the greatest of these is love,
Little Lantern?
Pearl
Once upon a time the Treasure of the world entire told a story about treasure in a field, treasure within treasure, a kingdom in a kingdom in a seemingly arbitrary object, a field of the whole world
I remember when these angry men were children, lovable children, and now they behave as though they still don’t know
You are the treasure
The King and his Kingdom is the treasure.
And if that were not enough, what will a man do if he (gains the whole world)
And loses his own soul?
Dearest Girl,
Pfft. I started to write a short story about you and your fairy godmother. She is a larger-than-life-take-no-guff fictional lady who lives in a real house in a real town where we both had our hearts broken.
She had a red-brick house with an actual turret in the middle of the cozy little town Kipling called Muskrat–Kipling, who might have advised handing you over to Baloo or Bagheera had you and I met up with him in our peripatetic trips about town.
I would let you run (fast as you can) to each stop sign (but wait for me there), most alarming for the people in their cars, always concerned you would just keep running.
I realized I could not finish the story. You can’t know a fairy godmother is trustworthy on the first or the second or the 500th day. You can’t know until
You figure out for yourself why and how she stares down all comers
As the most beautiful music
Spills out over the lawn, into the dark, dark night.
Military Polonaise
The girl with the long, dark hair bows her head in prayer as the ghostman’s call to arms wafts across our breaking
Passover bread, the belief that all promises are binding
Will keep us, will keep us
Bound to the hands of beauty
We live in other rooms
The sun inhales deep, swims down, down to us through a drowned world of trees, still our guardian angels, bright fish dart among them, impersonating song birds, the children are not safe here anymore
As ordinary men huddle and cast lots
for the seamless robe of
God
The Harrowing of Hell
We ask liturgical questions, why must the dead pretend they are anything else, here in the depths of the world where we have waited so long? We resemble our former selves, only shadows now, constructing chalk outlines of the world which has gone on without us
When he breaks through we watch in awe, chalk outlined arms raised, like children who must be helped into
The clothing of this beautiful
Hereafter
Carrying Light 