It

 

Unmoved and unmoving dust

graced with thoughts of rising

believes its bones may yet breathe

more than flute song

trilling through an empty marrow case,

surrenders to its remaking.

 

It writes litany of errant past

upon unwinding linen shroud.

Finding voice, it speaks these deeds aloud.

It hopes a future free,

prays the heart be shriven clean.

 

Moving forth, it gathers names

of those clambered over to reach its grave,

compelled to find each wronged and salve the wound,

kiss the scar.

It keeps words handy, the balm ever near.

 

Emptied of all but praise and hope

it finds and succors the rising dead.

It, made human at last.

 

 

On a Dime

(An Acrostic)

 

Turning pockets inside out, counting change

Held for years; the lucky coins that weren't

Ever lucky. How to account for lost

Time. Time spent hoarding time away from those

Who could scratch surface and find base metal.

Edge serrate or smooth, the same bland profile

Left or right stamped on every last exchange.

Vendor beware. One can never keep self

Entirely away from others. I gather

Smooth pebbles, all open fields, blue flowers:

Touchstones which affirm today, each moment

Entire in itself beyond all sorrows

Past, unreachable distant days squandered,

Sold for future never yet arriving.

 

 

 

 

Losing Blood

 

 

Grim

as a battlefield memory

of monsoon rains, the mud,

a friend's blood

trickling toward some distant river.

 

My son's eyes-steel gray

flashing to blue-

Storm clouds and water.

Shell shocked, bitter, grieving

my hands

and their imponderable motions.

 

Grieving my shadow, six

months long

in the fall of his sixth year

fading to seven.

 

I am powerless to separate

His grief from his blood,

His sorrow from my hands,

 

His guilt from my damnation.

Exchanging childhood

for baseless self-recrimination,

steeping long years

'til it ferments to anger

at my callous disregard

sown in frailty-

 

His frailty.

Longing for the father

who was absent in his presence

and ever present in protracted absence.

 

Both of us will long a lifetime

to raise the dead,

to separate spilled blood

from mud and the river

and give it life again.