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What do I beg for him beyond

return with all to perpetual

renewal?

Dancers'

knowledge of what a hard

game with the music's command can

make;

mind's

waking sight of the bright stream

connect;

loving trade

in heart's market.

Near Cloudcroft memory is one whole

A woman is speaking to trees on the mountain.

Part stand in the mat

of discarded needles and leaves; some are pushed

piece by piece into flame. She sees

a body crisped in the flame.

Outside is the winter night and her son's buried

ashes are frozen. She says no,

no, over and over,

erasing the blinded, bewildered face, denying

the final liquid rattle, but memory

has her, frozen in time

as he was paralyzed in space. October, November

days she discarded as fast as they ended

are layered over the days

she intended to save. If I had recorded his voice!

Now there is only the silence of trees

to answer the breath of her no.

Their roots nurse at the past as it absorbs

their dropped leaves, and their companions are burning.

Mourning

This is trickier than if they had

cut off my leg and nobody noticed, maiming

my gait but leaving the rest of the world untouched.

The city looks scathed, the landscape

striped, askew. I won't engage

to live as if flowers survive unplucked, as if

pianos embroider the evening. I learned vigilance

and became swift, driven

back over ground that will not be regained.

Flat aftermaths send warriors willing back

from peace to life counted in hours, illumined

by available light. A country's

good to fight for: ground

outlives every defeat; tissue is frail,

its' war soon over. This explosion's only

hummingbirds in honeysuckle.

Continue In Love With the Angel