a cosmic seasonal ditty

  Leonskaya                                      






               by


           Joseph Brodsky








The air—fierce frost and pine-boughs.
We’ll cram ourselves in thick clothes,
stumbling in drifts till we’re weary—
better a reindeer than a dromedary.


In the North if faith does not fail
God appears as the warden of a jail
where the kicks in our ribs were rough
but what you hear is “They didn’t get enough.”


In the South the white stuff’s a rare sight,
they love Christ who was also in flight,
desert-born, sand and straw his welcome,
he died, so they say, far from home.


So today, commemorate with wine and bread,
a life with just the sky’s roof overhead
because up there a man escapes
the arresting earth—plus there’s more space.






                        tr.  Derek Walcott






















//

o trials aplenty

              Censored                                                   














Donald Davidson
died in Nashville, Tennessee
on the 25^th April 1968,
aged 74.





/



a little north of south

Lament                                                                                                     


                                             By






                                   Debra Marquart


north dakota     i’m worried about you   
the companies you keep     all these new friends     north dakota   
          beyond the boom, beyond the precious resources
               do you really think they care what becomes of you  

north dakota     you used to be the shy one   
enchanted secret land loved by only a few     north dakota
when i traveled away and told people i belonged to you     north dakota
          your name rolled awkwardly from their tongues
               a mouth full of rocks, the name of a foreign country 
 
north dakota     you were the blushing wallflower
the natural beauty, nearly invisible, always on the periphery

 north dakota     the least visited state in the union   
now everyone knows your name     north dakota
the blogs and all the papers are talking about you     even 60 minutes
i’m collecting your clippings     north dakota   
the pictures of you from space
          the flares of natural gas in your northern corner
               like an exploding supernova
                    a massive city where no city exists
                          a giant red blight upon the land
and those puncture wounds  


  north dakota     take care of yourself  
the injection sites     I’ve see them on the maps   
eleven thousand active wells    one every two miles
all your indicators are up     north dakota   
          four hundred billion barrels, some estimates say
more oil than we have water to extract
          more oil than we have atmosphere to burn


north dakota     you could run the table right now     you could write your own ticket
          so, how can i tell you this?  


 north dakota, your politicians    
           are co-opted (or cowards or bought-out or honest and thwarted)
               they’re lowering the tax rate for oil companies
               they’re greasing the wheels that need no greasing
               they’re practically giving the water away


north dakota     dear sleeping beauty please, wake up
they have opened you up and said, come in     take everything
          what will become of your sacred places,
          what will become of the prairie dog, the wolf, the wild horses, the eagle,
          the meadowlark, the fox, the elk,
          the pronghorn antelope, the rare mountain lion,
          the roads, the air, the topsoil,
          your people, your people,
          what will become of the water?


north dakota     who will ever be able to live with you
once this is all over     i’m speaking to you now
as one wildcat girl     to another     be careful     north Dakota


























.....

blessed ubiquities

Our Lady of South Dakota

                              By

                  Adam Fitzgerald

Our Lady of Allen, South Dakota be with us.
Our Lady of turquoise towers and water pumps,
of barbiturate skies barreling o’er dry granaries,
bucolic at the continental pole of inaccessibility.

Our Lady of Brundage and Wounded Knee,
pray for us. Average family income: 2300 USD.
Our Lady of Tagg Flats, think of us sometime.
In Elmo, Montana, in McNary, Arizona, near

Parmelee and Dunseith, steer our grubby tykes
through the promises of Sunday Pay Per View.
Our Lady of Boys Town, weep for us in aisles
bleaker than Wal-Marts of Belden and Muniz.

Shampooers and fast food fryers, nanny aides,
and drivers work for greasy wads in zippered sheets
stained with love. Our Lady of Del Mar Heights,
what’s the dillio? Lady of Calio, Madonna of

Oglala, Virgin of Las Lomas, Mother of Whiterocks
and Winslow West, scrunchies and lip gloss flake
about your departing feet. Glam metal, nourish us.
Roseanne reruns, comfort us. Prairie casinos, protect us.

I saw Our Lady in Spring Creek and North Hartwell,
in La Rosita and Nageezi, by Lago and Lukachukai
looking bedraggled about the eyes. Her wrinkles tied
in crow’s-feet, bellied by refrigerated mac ‘n’ cheese,

hair-curler stiff, stinking of lye and Marlboro Reds,
cleaning ranch condominiums littered with coolers
of heavenly Coors Light. Our Lady of Sheep Springs
wrestling for Friendly’s blintzes. Our yellow-lipped,

chubby-wristed mother, flowing in tie-dye muumuu,
cucumber sundress, pebble-fisted, softly skirting along
kiddy pools on unmown lawns in babyshit peep-toe
platforms, by handle-bar streamers humping paydirt.

In Sawmill and La Puerta, bring Kool-Aid coupons
and save us our White Castle gallon-kind big slurps.
Give ever your grist to the grits of highway rest stops.
Our Lady of Wanblee, help rebuild the bleachers at

Butterfield Regional Middle School where the boys
grope at their camera phones in shadow, zit-stippled,
molested by high-voltage power wires arching across
aluminum meadows, steel ladies tacking clotheslines.

Our Lady of Gentle Snowfall, Mudslides and Indoor
Home Plumbing. Our Lady of BuzzFeed and Tyler Perry.
Our Lady of Pooper Scoopers and Ketchup Dispensaries.
Our Lady of Skechers and Old Navy, of Dental Dams

and Grease Trucks, of Single Mothers and Closet Cases,
Road Rage and Outlets, of Trailer Parks and Cereal,
Our Lady of Monday Night Football, Our Lady All About
Consumer Confidence, RVs and Veterans—be with us now.
























....

so that's what it's all about

by

c.s.  giscombe



PRAIRIE STYLE                                                                                                        






A sexual image about the prairie ought to be a good idea: it'd have no 
meaning in a larger context and its existence, furiously local, might make
outline itself a high level of vernacular--the image might be the sum of 
dire and hopeless songs, more of an after-image really. Love 
might be, in general, a revelation but sex could have a shape 
or a figure with which one could remember it; the speaker could recognize
it or could himself cause recognition to occur. Love might be a terror--the hesitation past town--but sex could be content and outline both, until the 
watcher (or the listener) turns away.

Male, female. Black men say trim. An outline's sameness is, finally, a 
reference. Towns, at a distance, are that--how they appear at first, a 
dim cluster, and then from five or six miles off; how they look when
you're only three miles away. Inbetween sightings is the prairie itself
to get across: trek, trace, the trick of landscape. Love suffers its wish-
fulness--it's an allegorical value and the speaker mimes allegory with 
descriptions of yearning, like the prairie's joke on us (among us). In-
land's a name, a factory, something to say; the thing upon which the image verges, the thing push articulates

the best poem ever

What if, says a small child to me this afternoon,
We made a poem without using any words at all?
Wouldn’t that be cool? You could use long twigs,
And feathers, or spider strands, and arrange them
So that people imagine what words could be there.
Wouldn’t that be cool? So there’s a different poem
For each reader. That would be the best poem ever.
The poem wouldn’t be on the page, right? It would
Be in the air, sort of. It would be between the twigs
And the person’s eyes, or behind the person’s eyes,
After the person saw whatever poem he or she saw.
Maybe there are a lot of poems that you can’t write
Down. Couldn’t that be? But they’re still there even
If no one can write them down, right? Poems in
Books are only a little bit of all the poems there are.
Those are only the poems someone found words for.








                                                 Brian Doyle   (  + May 2017  )






















...

ah but to see a certain bird prayer poem

I lost out as a Buddhist,  worse as a Christian.
Never mind: I ask, please, to see a harlequin duck.
It would best be quite soon.








                                             Helen Tanizaki     (+   6 August 1978  )
















..

a land and a time far hence

British India                                                              

        To

       Rudyard Kipling

       by

  

          Henry Jean-Marie Levet 

trans.  Kirby Olson

The offices close at four o’clock in Calcutta;
In the palace park the tennis court stirs;
In Eden Park grinds the spicy music of the sepoys;
The brilliant carriages salute each other on Red Road...

On his throne of gold, sparkling with rubies and emeralds,
His highness the Maharajah of Kapurthala
Longs for Liane de Pougy and Cléo de Mérode
Their autographed photos nearby...

— Benares, squatting, dreams along its stretch of the river;
The Brahmin, candid, tired of his trials, sits
In lively repose amidst the perfumed abstraction...

— At Lahore, 120 degrees Fahrenheit,
The doctors Grant and Perry play cricket, —
Railroads crawl through the sunlit jungle...
























....

cardio -adamant reset

J'ai dans mon coeur...                                            






                     Théophile Gautier 




 J'ai dans mon coeur, dont tout voile s'écarte,
Deux bancs d'ivoire, une table en cristal,
Où sont assis, tenant chacun leur carte,
Ton faux amour et mon amour loyal.

J'ai dans mon coeur, dans mon coeur diaphane,
Ton nom chéri qu'enferme un coffret d'or ;
Prends-en la clef, car nulle main profane
Ne doit l'ouvrir ni ne l'ouvrit encor.

Fouille mon coeur, ce coeur que tu dédaignes
Et qui pourtant n'est peuplé que de toi,
Et tu verras, mon amour, que tu règnes
Sur un pays dont nul homme n'est roi !






‘I have in my heart’                                                  

I have in my heart, which, all unveiled, I show,
Two benches of ivory, a crystal table too,
Whereon there sits, each with a card to throw,
Your false love and my true love for you.

I have in my heart, my heart transparent as glass,
The name I cherish hidden in a casket of gold ;
None have the key : profane hands shall not pass
To open it. The key is yours to hold.

Search my heart, the heart that you disdain,
And find within it no one dwells but you,
And, truly, love, within my heart you reign
Over a country without a king to view !
















....

Narragansett

The complete sentence narrates a satisfying process.
It closes and opens like a clam.
I take a knife to the sentence and start my evening at the raw bar.
It is hard work, and the sentences would prefer to be in the ocean.
I would rather be a patron of this establishment.
Someone over my shoulder
Would rather know I am going to continue to put up with his stuff.
It is not a wide receiver, his stuff. It is his development,
Which is gradual. It involves testing me. Sometimes
These tests take the form of imperatives. Drive onto the boat!
The boat would rather be en route to Maine.
It is an ambitious ferry. My knife wishes to whittle patterns
Into the enormous picnic table. Art does not narrate.




                                                 Jordan Davis

 

simply entitled : IF I LEFT YOU

here's a love poem

if I left you
would you cast your days into shades of grey and black
if I left you
would you wonder if I ever thought of coming back
would you curse my name and curse the day I was born
curse the day that I arrived
and the promises I'd sworn
if I left you


if you left me
I think I know just exactly what I'd do
if you left me
I'd work out a hundred and ninety shades of blue
I'd jump into a bottle and swim till I died
I'd write the wretched  epitath
  that simply says  " I tried "
if you left me


if I left you
 would don the crown of anger upon your heart
if I left you
would you weave the yarns of vengeance into your art
would you deride the life of virtue with all of your friends
would you wear the wound of sorrow
the wound that never mends
if I left you

if you left me
I'd take to staring down the depths of dark
if you left me
no tellin' on what foolish journeys I might embark
my heart would surely falter I'd lose my voice
I'd choose the way of  emptiness
if I thought I had a choice
if  you left me




               a jh special
















.

cringing perception

Werewolf in selvage I saw
         In day's dawn changing his shape
      Amid leaves he lay
            and in his face, sleeping, such pain
                        I fled agape


                           




                  Ezra Pound transl.  of a poem
                                         
                                            by
 
                                         Jaime de Angulo
















....

faith by despair

Perfection, Perfection                              

                                 by

                     Kilian McDonnell OSB

("I will walk the way of perfection." Psalm 101:2) 




 I have had it with perfection.
I have packed my bags,
I am out of here.
Gone.

As certain as rain
will make you wet,
perfection will do you
in.

It droppeth not as dew
upon the summer grass
to give liberty and green
joy.

Perfection straineth out
the quality of mercy,
withers rapture at its
birth.

Before the battle is half begun,
cold probity thinks
it can't be won, concedes the
war.

I've handed in my notice,
given back my keys,
signed my severance check, I
quit.

Hints I could have taken:
Even the perfect chiseled form of
Michelangelo's radiant David
squints,

the Venus de Milo
has no arms,
the Liberty Bell is
cracked.














                              a brother's song














...

he were a cipher of indigenous minds he were

3 fragment poems by Jaime de Angulo                                                     












fishes in the sky translucent i left my home below and lost my

               way pursuing that bird of many colors

                              fishes in the sky

                                translucent

                     in the sky my home below

           fishes lost my home pursuing many colors

  translucent in the sky of many colors below my home

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

wildcat

you who walk the trail in broad daylight

contemptuous and haughty

 

puma

you who unseen follow people on the trail

curious and shy

 

which of you

last night

uttered that long cry

so full of longing

 

                     (berkeley 27 feb '50)

 

 

 

 

Cat by the fire, why do you purr ?
Fire in the hearth, why do you burn ?
Fire in my heart, will you never learn
to turn to ashes.

.....

ausculta revisited

Three Pieces

 ~ Rosmarie Waldrop


ANY SINGLE THING

Is so complicated we can talk about it only by a little shove with the knee. The cry of the gulls. The line between water and grammar. Horizon and interpretation. Between two blues. Field of error. My gestures not my own. Desire not a color. And the sound of the sea. Listen.

OFFERS OF SKY

Even a slight curvature in the path of the light will produce dim shapes of possibles. Night minus tears. Or where. The shared adventure. Or amaranth, love-lies-ableeding. Who sings this song? Who talks desire? And she for use as long as. High in the air. Or clouds.

THE EQUATION MUST BE BEAUTIFUL

Allow the first look its density. Before what words make of it. Or often, gusts of wind. Light compact in comparison. With what? Inert reason? But I admit that everything is interrelated. On the model of language. The lovers on the park bench, the bakery, the shadows playing on the wall. Breath quenched in multiple directions.







.

the truth will make your head spin

What is Tao? It is just this.
It cannot be rendered into speech.
If you insist on an explanation, ...... just this.


                                  Lu Tung Pin









...

one by neruda

Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go.









.....

pound poem

Child of the grass

The years pass Above us

Shadows of air All these shall Love us

Winds for our fellows

The browns and the yellows

      Of autumn our colors

Now at our life's morn. Be we well sworn

Ne'er to grow older

Our spirits be bolder At meeting

Than e'er before All the old lore

Of the forests & woodways

Shall aid us: Keep we the bond & seal

Ne'er shall we feel

      Aught of sorrow
 
      Let light flow about thee

      As  a cloak of air




                       Ezra Pound










...

wooly bully

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.
The obedient must be slaves.






                                Henry David Thoreau












....

love like a hurricane

The Idea of Order at Key West            






                                            

                                                

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.   

The water never formed to mind or voice,   

Like a body wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion   

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,   

That was not ours although we understood,   

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.   

The song and water were not medleyed sound   

Even if what she sang was what she heard,   

Since what she sang was uttered word by word.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred   

The grinding water and the gasping wind;   

But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.   

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea

Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.   

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew   

It was the spirit that we sought and knew   

That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea   

That rose, or even colored by many waves;   

If it was only the outer voice of sky

And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,   

However clear, it would have been deep air,   

The heaving speech of air, a summer sound   

Repeated in a summer without end

And sound alone. But it was more than that,   

More even than her voice, and ours, among

The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,   

Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped   

On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres   

Of sky and sea.

                           It was her voice that made   

The sky acutest at its vanishing.   

She measured to the hour its solitude.   

She was the single artificer of the world

In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,   

Whatever self it had, became the self

That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,   

As we beheld her striding there alone,

Knew that there never was a world for her   

Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,   

Why, when the singing ended and we turned   

Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,   

The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,   

As the night descended, tilting in the air,   

Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,   

Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,   

Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,   

The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,   

Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,   

And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

                                         Wallace Stevens

....

a certain happenstance in fate

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN                                            

We will be what we could be. Do not say,
    "It might have been, had not or that, or this."
No fate can keep us from the chosen way;
    He only might who is.

 We will do what we could do. Do not dream
    Chance leaves a hero, all uncrowned to grieve.
I hold, all men are greatly what they seem;
    He does who could achieve. 

 We will climb where we could climb. Tell me not
    Of adverse storms that kept thee from the height.
What eagle ever missed the peak he sought?
    He always climbs who might. 

 I do not like the phrase, "It might have been!"
    It lacks all force, and life's best truths perverts:
For I believe we have, and reach, and win,
    Whatever our deserts.








                     Ella Wheeler Wilcox
















....








...

FOUR LAKES

                     

We run around four lakes. 
Tired legs connect them
with the meager help of muscles thrashed on granite faces
not a few hours earlier.
We’ve been
busy bees collecting pollen
for the honey of ascension,
or the hum of truth in still moments,
somewhere between a delayed lunch, and a morning coffee that hits the belly deep
enough to get us up and out, and up again. 
 
Legs which shimmied fear now ebb into the rhythm
of a safe request:
roll along, dodge the roots
wrapped in the pores of tree-trunks.
This is why I run.
To ease into the up and get carried up in the down.
To forgive myself for how I couldn’t
I just couldn’t.
Like a lost swimmer, who undulates with a rhythm
she didn't anticipate, and now depends on
to buoy her up,
as her last breath approaches the precipice
hung between how much she must to relax
before letting go of too much.
So too do I move, so too do I try on trust,
and thrust it off.
 
But my relief comes sooner since
the only tide that tugs
is the light waving through the branches
while dusk comes late, and I’m late again
always late,
hiccuped up and out, ever-desperate to catch up
to the specter I’ve collaged with memories of myself.
Since what we once were always remains
the potential of what we could become
and can never become
muddled in hope and I know.
 
And time once again billows, shoves me forward
buoys me up,
drops me at the end
just as I realize I will never be done
and as hard as it once was, as I swore it would get
there’s never a real memory beyond a timid touch
of the winded that eradicates all outside
the bottom of the last hill, and the top of this one.
Only glimpses, and a fondness for the knife come up
until it’s back in my throat.
Like a lump of a bite I can’t swallow
it needs the heavier pressure of another
 to carry it through.
 
Our body knows what’s best for us and what’s not, after all.
But
my exhaustion does not always have the pillow of trusting one’s self
to rest its head on.
It’s always been impossible
to swallow things whole,
or remember what whole felt like,
after all’s done and run.
I’m still left with that promise
I gave myself for the future
which I’m up against now
always up against
that lump.


                              Ranae  Scott




















......

ELEGY IN APRIL AND SEPTEMBER

-




------------------------------------------------------------------------------








Hush, thrush! Hush, missen-thrush, I listen...
I heard the flush of footsteps through the loose leaves,
And a low whistle by the water's brim.

Still! Daffodil! Nay, hail me not so gaily,-
Your gay gold lily daunts me and deceives,
Who follow gleams more golden and more slim.

Look, brook! O run and look, O run!
The vain reeds shook? - Yet search till gray sea heaves,
And I will stray among these fields for him.

Gaze, daisy! Stare through haze and glare,
And mark the hazardous stars all dawns and eves,
For my eye withers, and his star wanes dim.


2

Close, rose, and droop, heliotrope,
And shudder, hope! The shattering winter blows.
Drop, heliotrope, and close, rose...

Mourn, corn, and sigh, rye.
Men garner you, but youth's head lies forlorn.
Sigh, rye, and mourn, corn...

Brood, wood, and muse, yews,
The ways gods use we have not understood.
Muse, yews, and brood, wood...  








                                        Wilfred Owen
















----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

all things in due time

Village Maternity                                      






The mother puts
          the newborn day
                     to her breast


turnips
         like skulls
                  are heaped
                               house high


before the blood has been washed
                            from the legs of the sky








                                                 John Berger  1976














.....  I am presently living with the collected poems of john berger




















....

intimidations of light and shadow

For Those In Hiding


In the far away dawn shadows
on the western side of the trees
what a fear there was
of the day now begun
with the arrival of the sun.


                   John Berger










.....

cognitive verbal blips...some say brain farts

                

It's  hard for some men to finish their sentances....   

Sometimes a man can't say
What he . . . A wind comes
And his doors don't rattle. Rain
Comes and his hair is dry.

There's a lot to keep inside
And a lot to . . . Sometimes shame
Means we. . . Children are cruel,
He's six and his hands. . .

Even Hamlet kept passing
The king praying
And the king said,
"There was something. . . ."




                  Robert Bly




















..

thinking: i recently held a 3 month old baby named Jayber

THE HOLD                                                                  


                        

There it is!  Just before putting out the light.
Here in the doorway to his room.
The unmistakable smell of him,
though his train pulled out an hour ago.
Not a child’s smell anymore, but a young man’s air
of college nights and long wool coats
and jokes so cool they cannot be explained.
You had to be there, Dad, he says.

Now in his scented wake I wait,
knowing he’ll soon be gone for good,
graduating to some new city,
paying too much rent.
And this room where for years he slept
and read, while brown hair broke through
on his face and chest… Soon
it will be a place for someone else to rest. 
But not quite yet.

This fragrant air is sweet to me
tonight. The dusty heat rising
from baseboard vents. The windows tight. 
His house-warmed high school books
upright in their case.
Like me, they’ve done their work.
What we instructors had to say
has all been said.  And what he took to heart
is as unfathomable now
as what he cast away.

For he’s moving on and on his own
to worlds he’ll live to see
but I will never fully know.  Of course
he’ll stop again to sleep and eat.
We’ll speak again of Charlemagne
and Russell Crowe.   But the being of him,
that second self housed for years
nearly inside my skin, is elsewhere
flowing on, flown.

How does a father live, I wonder.
But it’s late now.  At the stair
my wife is calling.  And so I remember
that morning my son was first handed to me,
still blood-smudged and birth-slippery.
And because I was a new father then
and because my inexperience showed
the midwife taught me how to hold a child properly.
Lightly now, she cautioned. 
But also pulling at my arms, testing me,
until I sensed what it meant
not to let go.




                               Charles Douthat




















.

lyrica interiorum

               CONSTANCE                                   






when i was pregnant, she told me
reaching back more than twenty years
for the memory


put sunflower seeds on my belly

 i used to read aloud to my son
so he could hear our bones


i love our voices, she said
chickadee & sparrow flutter down
lured by the seeds and undisturbed
by our voices


i put your hand on my belly
i invite you to read this aloud
i want to listen to our bones


& to love our voices, for a little while




                         Joanne Arnott   (  metis nation Canada  )














,

eulogological reflection

    THE BODY OF CHRIST                                                            

The morning she died, I left the church

early, before the sun rose. I don't know

what made me go. My sore knees. My throat

raw with whispered prayers I heard the echo

all around me. I remember that sanctuary

filled with believers, their lips moving,

their faith so fierce, I, too, could not doubt

that my mother would stand, the swelling

in her arm faded, the snake's poison defeated

by prayer. And so I went outside to the deep

blue sky, where the first animals awake were flying:

a line of geese heading north, their wings

as perfectly aligned as the stitches in a buttonhole.

And I imagined the sky as a coat

and wondered who it protected:

God? Or us from God?

And when I turned back, the mouths

inside the church had changed

to solid lines. The men walking into the morning

did not meet each other's eyes, and

the women were left inside with the body.

                                                       Lenae  Nofziger

.....