A Box To Hold Your Ashes
Mostly I feel the emptiness. It is lovely. Inside it there is nothing I need do. You are gone. I find a box to hold your ashes, something white to cover my head. The morning light seeps into the sky in exchange for you, seeping away. Less and less I am held here myself. And yet, I am held. I light candles, say little… take one step nearer each bright day. © 2015 |
The Moon is Not a C
The moon is not a C, for Christo, tonight. No sacrifice is yet required. Rather the moon is a D, for Dios, promising fulfillment. But more, she is a cradle, tipped down and resting on her back, bottom-heavy, lit to hold a solstice baby or an old woman, dying. Something is arriving. My mother pats the back of my head as I weep on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she whispers. The dying comfort the living. Blood-bond pulses between us, as the spaces between her breaths widen. The vigil begins. I listen for each breath through the long night, as she once listened for mine. We are birthing into this bright cradle of night. My brother points to the North Star, tells how the whole sky revolves, and I see it again as if for the first time, that great timeless whirl of existence. That star is always right there, he assures. How could I not be certain, each time I walk out in the dark, of what guides and orients, where to turn, and what step to take, towards the light. © 2012 |
Can Carry
(written for sculpture by Kevin Donegan) She can carry this weight of stone. She is no martyr. Willing under bowed head and sinewed limbs, a heart’s desire to be of service. Stone of weight is stone of gaze. Salt of earth is salt of eye. Eye of storm is eye of vision. Now we are unmaking the world. Earth’s tremor in her snaky locks, she carries the ruin she sees, not in despair, but in devotion. She speaks inside her silence. © 2013 |