Vultures
Waiting
For
That
One
Sunset
To come
Like
A
Vulture
To
Pick
Off
The last
Dead
Meat
And
Replace
Me
With
Complete
Soul
Before the willow,
the fence,
the coffins waiting in rows,
she stitched a flower
to witness the names she kept
in the center,
rooted in the space
between sorrow and resolve.
Some griefs are too deep to piece.
At the cemetery’s gates
she placed
her signature in red,
spilling out in revision,
bordering the path:
a roseberry repeating
on calico cut from school clothes,
from scraps worn soft
by boys buried in Ohio.
Each bud a word,
each leaf a memory pressed
between thimble and threadscript —
for remembrance,
not forever.
You’re speaking,
and I’m missing words.
Every third, I reckon,
slipping through the gap in
the window’s sill, or
the door I left ajar.
Wherever lost words go,
your’s have gone and left me
trying to fill in the gaps
with wadded pages torn from
a faded student copy
of Webster’s Dictionary —
yellowed, dog earred, I used
as a door stop.
Mother and Daddy flee
Today the congregation celebrated Christ the King Sunday
with a procession in 90-degree heat. More than the sunlight
piercing the stained-glass windows, one illuminating Mary
as she rests her hands on her son’s shoulders, more
than the parable of loaves and fish, more than the carved Apostles
vibrating to our anthem about the bread of angels
becoming the bread of man,
more than the perfume of snuffed candles, I enjoyed
being one of 400 walking around the block.
After priests and a deacon, altar boys and girls
gathered before the incense-bathed altar, we followed them
as a priest carried the monstrance under a canopy, singing
the same refrain until the congregation arrived at two stations–
the rectory and the school. Undeterred by a droning
helicopter, we stayed in sync to the end. Back at the Cathedral,
we chanted divine praises. Following the closing hymn
and organ recessional, the deacon, preparing
to perform a baptism, joked that he was already wet.
We processed in a scraggly line bearing public witness.
Some kneeled at the stations, some stood.
When some of us flagged, others would take up the song.
As everybody knows, no one with red hair can ever truly be said to be handsome.
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
My hair was the color of carrots,
which combined with my freckles
& milky white skin that burned
like a vampire’s on contact with the sun,
marked me as the enemy on the playground.
I’d rather be dead than red on the head!
To point out that my hair was orange,
actually, only made things worse.
It took me a while to notice that redhead girls
got a free ride. They were celebrated
as little firecrackers, or adorably zany
like Lucille Ball. As the only redhead boy
in my class, I was the changeling, devil, freak.
Even my daddy joked that my real father
was the milkman. I never laughed at that.
After a few years of cute Richie Cunningham
& bonny Prince Harry, conditions improved
for my burning-bush brethren. The word ginger,
with its connotations of healing & deliciousness,
entered the language like a balm, coaxing
the haters to hate a little less. But by then
it was too late for me, my hair gone gray.
Paradigm shifts are boats I always miss.
At least now I can look at photos of myself as a boy
& and think maybe I wasn’t so ugly, after all.
My friend likes to brag
about how good he is
at sharpening
pencils.
I told him,
“You make
a good point!”
less than sublime
but isn’t life most often?
I desire more
and like I often feel at the grocery
reaching, actually climbing, foot on bottom shelf
trying to grab an item on top
just beyond reach, due to my petite stature
often times someone asks to help
other times I manage alone
the question, which begs an answer
why is what I want on the top shelf?
or perhaps better put, in a more imaginative wording
why are my wants out of reach?
is the answer in the striving
or the clerk who assists before I topple three glass bottles to the ground
meaning I need to learn to ask for help
a combination, maybe
I strive to see the positive
yet often settle, taking nothing or the less desirable yet obtainable
leaving whatever I reached for
on the top shelf
I like to think Wendell Berry saw me coming
when he wrote about the wood drake,
thought of me all those years before my birth
as he penned to life the great heron, feeding, continuing
in anticipation of the day that I would wake thinking
of my own life and my children’s lives, in anticipation
of the day I could water gardens with tears,
every breath a prayer
——-
*with thanks to The Peace of Wild Things and Wendell Berry
