What phase is the moon in tonight? The woman asks the boy. Waning gibbous, he answers after a squint and a wave of his hand at the glowing orb, close enough to touch. She asks herself if she should look at the pictures, they could look at the photographs together. Decides it is too soon. No clouds to hide them, nothing but clear skies in the forecast as each fresh loss had come
In the sunny days
After rain.
The moon and a neighborly planet shine bright, two boats in the current of night
While the trees reach out to one another
I tell myself you are in another country which is more than true, more than doggedly-what-I-see-true.
You are in another country no sun lights the so blue sky there and we will
All be changed.
(In a time-keeping nod to newcomers) on “Thursdays” the cows are in charge. Always close to the Grown Up Manger Child,
All chew their cud
In the greenest pastures
And amble down to the wide, wide River of Life
To drink whenever we want.
You do load after load of laundry, grateful for the workhorse machine from a low-tech era and the hot Texas sun–ad hoc laundry assistant
You drag the oriental rug outside, wash it like a corpse before burial, ask if it can be saved
You scrub fabric, bleaching where you can, trying to wash out a virus which will not, does not, abate.
Push aside the agony of why you have to do all this. Walk this road. Pray for the resurrection of the dead and the impossible watercolors of heaven
Our Father
Who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
Here in us, as it is in heaven.
Adopted mom–denizen of the ordinary. Ordinary tea, ordinary clothes, ordinary mulch, overgrown flower beds. Scans the sky for rain. Rattles around in the-used-to-be marveling at how things have not turned out as expected.
Nondescript kitchen window transforms itself into stained glass as I overthink which teacup, settle on porcelain white so different from the non-Euclidean trees green, alive, and fierce in this hot summer wind
I drop
two bags into the single cup, pour water from the kettle, assess how full the tea tin used to be
Last time we were alive
Together.
6 minutes to Ballinger, Texas I missed you. Not possessing the ability to stop all the clocks, I watched windmills instead, recording the flat, hot, windy stretch of road while the Catholic radio station came in so clear with words of uneven comfort. I picture you a Ghibli bride, birdcage veil like Jackie Kennedy, always dainty, smallest, sweetest bouquet of flowers held between your front two paws as you proceed toward our mutual Savior, unswerving in his gaze.
…and he turns loose the South Wind…drenched wings, night-black armor where face should have been…
–Ovid
Saw you once
In the photo booth of grief
Just before the Flood.
Now that I have seen the diamondback rattler in the domain of children I see him again everywhere–the darkness notched between sidings and foundations, lassoed water hoses resting in the sun, tree branches in the grass, all become the skin and flesh and memory of the foolish man who held just the severed head of his deadly foe too close to human skin.
We keep the most dangerous pets coiled in emptied potato salad containers, hastily labeled with words too awful to write down in anything but
Invisible ink.
To be clear you are all grown up now and living somewhere as I try yet again to excise what you have done to us all from pictures of beautiful children.
You were
You are a dangerous male child
But what you will be
Is mountains told to throw themselves
Into the Sea.
Mark 11:22-23 NIV
[22] “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. [23] “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.
Carrying Light 