Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Volumes

you bring me books
the way I offer flowers to the ones I love
and I know I'm on your mind
when you begin to read
for me.

or if not, at least you speculate -
you ask what might compel, and unlike daisies,
your choices always last the years.
Good or lousy, humor and nuance,
your choices gift me thus;
I need not choose.

Mistrusting God and day's end,
and the folding back of cold sheets,
and the smell of secret fear,
still, I rely upon your taste.

When I am dead and gone, a shelf of works
left in your name, will be as much my life preserved
as pictures in a family album,

as much a key to Scripture
as the double helix.

Our children, years from now, will wonder
shrug, and turn the page.

Monday, December 28, 2009

ten thousand to one

there are
ten thousand imperfections
and just one life

there are in fact as many
as snowflakes on the hill, beneath the skids;
as the soft cells in a freckle,
as the birds above.

but still just one.

I have drawn my breath
against the headwind
of prevailing loves, to ponder
more, and more,
and every imperfection cedes to Now. I reach
for the searching root of you
and choose;
to pull you into me, to watch
our bodies twine, to find
a cradle big enough.

ten thousand imperfections,
and this our consolation:
to loose the cords of longing,
be undone
and loved again,
again, again,
before tomorrow.

sore and sorry for my crimes,
still I am just one life.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

St. Lucy's Hour

At night, the bus stop on the Broadway bridge
is only itself, but more so -
December sixteen, eighteen hundred hours:

the gritty glare of lamps that barely
penetrate the dim,
the cold air, the bare-headed shock of it,
the sudden sharp beams and the wheels
of the traffic,
the lateness of the day.

You tell me you're having trouble with your eyes.
You can't see where you're going, and there's pain -
you're laying awake in the dark.

Advent.

Looking back as I always do
to where I've been, across the tracks --
past the mill,
the school and the working class houses --
I search for our steeple,
the church where we meet, and
it's gone.

It's gone,
and worse --

Eighteen hundred hours. To my right,
an old woman, waiting;
to my left, three boys, teenagers
drunk and rapping, they're waiting --
and you, I'm glad you can't see this:
the veil is the color of lead, and the sky,
and the snow with exhaust from the cars.
A pall,
a caul,
a shadow of doubt or premonition.

You stayed home today, the darkest of days,
and groaned beneath the weight of it,
nine months and three; anniversary.
The beams of the roof, the life of the womb,
the wait.