Poetry

Haven

Frost clings to cascading haystacks

in the comfort of a low fog bank,

resting

in the benediction of the softened morning sun;

the rocking chair, holding a rhythm,

the barn door, open like a hymnal,

the fenceline, stretched as a sheet of music;

eddies of sawdust dance in the light.

This is distinct,

this is a dilation of time,

this is intercession,

this is the mote in God’s eye,

and the blessing of memory coiled in on itself

with the old lariat in the corner.

Listen to this silent song:

a distant scrap of laughter,

brushing off a rising wall of cut granite;

the fading warmth of an embrace

stealing away into the mist.

Like the mason’s craft,

the mortar cracks to dust;

the stone remains.

Tabernacle

Hush, now;

the sun is spilling over these unending pastures,

and she is standing at the end of the field,

watching

the coupling and the uncoupling,

the warp and the weave,

the sky and the soil;

and, holding a handful of dirt,

sees light race to the edge of the prairie

where it drops off into space.

There is a voice, here,

a scrap of sermon remembered:

“…let us reap this rampant harvest from the firmament.”

She stands, letting the stalks brush her hand-

some are bent,

some are broken,

some are painted with a swath of morning,

and some are spattered with a thin trail of blood,

as tails of air uncoil in the wheatgrass

over miles of root woven to the earth,

pulling at the groundwater;

something moves, a pulse

insistent as the creak of a wooden pew,

in this place

unleavened as the bread

cooled upon the dinner table.

Hush, now;

she stands at the end of the field

as the wind stirs behind her,

and, for a moment,

picks fragments of ash

from a naked foundation.

Heirloom

This afternoon, I suggest
you both wander the antique shop,
instead of passing by,

and admire the woodwork
and what it may retain:

the bread that has been broken at this table,
the fears that have been projected onto this mirror,
the love that has been made in this bed,
the plate, cracked by the fist
born from the open palm of affection,

the dresser, once sitting by the threshold,
a father, recoiling at the sign above it, which says
“Bless this house”,

a mother, leaning on the armoire, saying
“Let this cup pass from me”,

a grandmother, holding a bowl,
staring at her hands in amazement,
saying “I am grown old”,

and a mural in stained glass-
a short blessing of sun in the shadow.

If you look closely,
you can see

the bones that have broken
constructing this life,
and the hands that have bled
building this house.

Communion

Summer’s final fruit clutches the bough;

her quill draws more ink

as ice dusts the window’s edge.

The candle’s wick burns,

and burns,

and burns…

the light of the eve deepens,

and for company:

scratch of the pen,

clink of the inkwell,

tick of the timepiece.

Supplication pours onto parchment,

added to the stack of prayers

growing beside the desk,

and steam lifts into the room

from a chipped china cup.

The spaces in between, punctuated

by the snap of burning logs

from the fire that takes in the air,

and sends up the smoke of dreams

that refuse to die.

There are ghosts here, you know.

They wander the acres outside,

and will often come sit by the mantle,

having forgotten themselves,

unaware of the lineage

hidden in the cracked, leather-bound Bible.

Even in an empty house,

a reliquary haven,

we carefully place our harvests of memory

in the rooms, and in the halls:

the grandfather clock,

the queen bed,

twin trunks in the attic-

one, empty;

the other, filled with sacraments.

This is a covenant, you know-

with the oak and the axe,

with the wheat and the chaff,

with the thread and the loom,

with the earth and the plow.

And as her pen moves in the twilight,

the ghosts watch through the window

as the apple falls,

and, crackling, hits the frosted grass below.

Growth

Do you hide when the night growls;

when the liquid that falls from a heavy sky

sloughs the grime

from windows,

from streets,

from my hands?

It makes all things to each other naked

as your words, washing over my face-

this, too, is a solvent

better than water.

But then,

where does what is washed collect?

What, still, is sanctified?

It is sure a purer thing

where the ground is not shy,

where your voice is not swallowed by the din,

and the sky is burgeoned

with a wetness that will fatten the summer grass.

Thunder sings in the cleansing,

giving a question, falling away with the wind,

an answer, leaving with the rain;

and both holding each the other.

This, too, is a kindness

better than faith.

Bazaar

It’s nice to meet you, as well.

These things laid before you
on the blanket,
recently lifted
from my repository
are indeed for sale,
and I’m glad they’ve caught your eye.

Some are questions;
some, answers;
though they do not always match.

I offer collections of mysteria,
and gatherings of the plain.

I offer of the disconcerting,
and the unique.

So, then-
what will you give me

for the lock of whitened hair,
the stretch of cracked earth split by fenceline,
the barn owl’s call in the evening,
this cup of tears,
that lingering late-summer kiss?

What will you give me
for my dog, fading in my arms,
my sister, leaping from the ocean,
my mother’s laugh-lines,
my father’s tire tracks,
my grandfather’s letters?

What will you trade me
for staring into the void of the midnight sky?

And what will you trade me
for judgment,
or forgiveness?

What will you give me?

Peacefield

What of these words

printed in a darkened room,

what of the light coming in under the door,

what of the field beyond,

and you; what of you?

See the moon, who looks down upon us;

she watches her children

without remorse or direction.

We are seedlings under the summer willow-

me, thrown with the rocks

as the horse paws the earth

of the field that lies fallow around us;

and you, rooted in the rich ground,

bending in the wind, arms raised

in appeal to heaven each night.

Tracker

The snow drifts across
my father’s footprints
as my breath crystallizes in the night;

and my beard, whitened
prematurely
by condensation-

I have come to a clearing,
beyond the forest’s egress;
a place of rest in summer,
a cross-thatched game trail in winter.

The silence of this season lays heavy
and quiet, quiet
as the aurora dances
on the spine of the world.

Can you tell me
what will be taken from this?

The sound, the lack of sound,
the rage, the lack of rage,
the stripping of the ego?

We see each other then, the wolf and I,
our gaze locked outside of time-
with no violation or calamity,

the freezing of each our own breath
the only movement here
until we emerge, and move apart.

Whatever was shown
in the snow before has passed,
leaving only his tracks
and my own.

Do you see the mountain to the west?

Perhaps he will come down,
or I will go up…
and one of us will unthaw,
come spring.

The Wyrding Way

Near the dead of the lake,
in the night of the woods,
the witching hour becomes thick and heavy,
where the divine will not pass.

The ones who borrow are hiding in the trees,
in the minds of the forest,
in the cracks of the earth,
in the deep mire of the evening.

Here the moon comforts the sun,
who whimpers in frustration where he cannot reach-
a tangle-copse of raven burdens.

The town turns out quilts
of every glorious color and heavenly design,
and I am a stiff black thread for the silver needle-
threaded perfectly, and useless for sewing.

She knows when the witching will happen,
but in her prison I cannot reach her,
and the light of my power is stopped in a dam.

Under the oak,
Under the holly,
Under the yew,
they gather.

The argent circle hung from my neck
is a signet of sacred light to stay the snake,
and a sigil to draw the venom.
Bones of a horse jaw I clasp, ward of the evil eye.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for a sinner, now and at the hour of my death.

When they dropped the ashes of my ancestors,
I remember a spirit rising from the shards,
wailing and chained to the ground under the half moon.

Someone holds aloft an effigy of straw.
It will raise a horror of bones from my still-warm body,
and I will become a golem for the rest of my days.

The inkwell is broken, shattering black over the parchment;
I was held by the heart when baptized in the waters of Styx.

Storm

It charges up in the summer, and bites;

the wind throws dust that ricochets off your teeth

and stings your eyes;

so you stay, standing in the lean-to with the horses

listening to the howl and the deafening pulse on the roof,

counting between the rain that dashes

and shatters in the dirt outside,

until it heads south in front of a sunlight tail;

so you sit and listen to the echo

and the small noises of the ground after a storm,

dazed by oases of water-filled hoofprints.