Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off,

glaciers to melt and raise the sea.

The blueprint is clear -

Expect a tiny storm of mercy–

full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse, to tithe the land.

And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles.

Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air.

Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize

every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus.

Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis,

as she feigns redemption,

fools us with false devotion.

She believes our defiance will set her free.

We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth.

then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.

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Covid19 Journey Day 27

April 17, 2020 Today’s celebration – Last May I attended the annual school fundraising gala. Browsing the items on the silent auction tables, I found nothing that that stirred my avarice, so I took another tack and decided to find things that I could have fun with or devise pleasure from, as a way to justify some necessary opening bids. There was an impressive box of chocolate bars with a couple bottles of red on which I entered the first bid, and I paused at a wooden crate with another pair of wines, nice glasses and a gift certificate for a charcuterie tray. The vintner of the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay was Kosta Browne. Without a thought of the initial bid being the winning bid, I scratched my offer on line #1 - $150. I did covet a set of hand thrown mugs from our headmaster’s wheel, but found my bid lost in the healthy bid escalations. By the end of the evening though, I was the winner of the box of wine and chocolate and the two bottles of Kosta Browne. Once at home

Temerity

Helen holds hands with thunderheads. It helps when she's weak in the knees, lightning running down abductors, running down bones. Even temple guards succumb to such days, soft as pillows - scarlet velveteen on silk sheets. Pink cyclamen bells the air, and Helen cut her traces. Bridget dreams the summer wind. Its susurrate moan rises in waves, swells with tides of sandalwood to chariot the night. She spins rhapsody around its howl, dawns a golden jet stream on spangled festoons of cirrus. Weak knees fly off with yellow wind, before Bridget stills the night. Sicily wets her lips with limoncello, quells the rabble of heartache, the clatter of waiting. She rings goblets like temple bells, makes a sound map for lost days. Her boat of pink sand brims in blood oranges and cyclamen. Lightning festoons the rabble, Sicily finds Helen’s hand.

The Red Coat

You believe in open society, big dreaming and serendipity! You got perspective - a rock cairn with prayer flags. What did it take to pack up home and family, to travel treacherous miles - thousands, to be a stranger in a partisan land? This is the story of your grandmothers, your story too, without the peril. Bold hearts learn to swim with trouble. At 12, your Yankee mother sent you to join the school walk out of Southern Segregation. You were happy to buck the system, happy for new friends. Fraternizing with these kids fattened a fringe - cushioned the mean gibes of local cliches and clans. You linked arms, to carry a fine truth dancing between you: Life is unkind, life is a mission, life is a mercy. Your mother was sixteen when the H-bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Did New England air shake with wails that ricocheted across the night from Nippon to Narragansett? The sirens and howls, the hungry ghosts when they nipped the Nipponese. At sixte

What the Muses Leave Behind

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