leaks and slumps, then buckles
in great plaster sheets, shattered and dusty.
Now all manner of rust and rot can enter,
weeds and moss growing between the pews.
Worms in the wood, an aisle of mulch,
an altar of dandelions, nests, and seed.
The church fails board by board,
jagged window by jagged window
through which bees travel unimpeded.
It whistles and groans, this dying church.
When a boy tries to find it, it’s gone.
His mother collapsed from the inside out,
her heart and lungs accumulating liquid
until there was too much to sieve,
and she told her grieving son, “Go East,”
not knowing the church he sought was a dream,
a cracked dish, a syringe of morphine.
Return
When he returned home after many years,
an enormous oak had split his house in two,
its trunk growing right through the center hall.
Though there was nobody living in the tilting
rooms, he recognized some simple objects:
a milk jug once filled with daisies, a single shoe.
Where a mirror had dangled, a darkened oval
remained on the wall. No bark, no call, no singing.
But though he didn’t understand what he saw,
he knew the tree, broad and green, was a blessing.
Demeter Mourns the Sisters
As though grief were not enough,
I must write of it. Ulcerous earth
demands my black-seeded poppies.
Women’s names frame ebony October:
Maria, Julie, Ishiuan, Anne.
I want to recast them as verbs,
sink them like bulbs, latent but alive,
and await their allium globes
once the shriving is over.
But I don’t bear false hopes.
My gift to the mourning is winter.
Leaflessness winnows pain.
Imagine the trees bare for your sake,
branches click clacking in the wind
like fluid-filled lungs wheezing air.
Follow my shadow. Pluck the bitter
herbs at your feet, then baste
with them a steaming bowl of tubers.
Almond Blossoms
On night shift in the ICU,
Rebecca tends to the sickest
patients, the ones subdued
on morphine and likely to die.
When she’s free, she drives
the backroads of California,
photographing almond trees.
Joy is a gift not given to all.
In pain, it’s evasive as a squirrel.
My friend, who can no longer lift
her head, her neck bowed down
with blistered tumors, tells me
I’m tired of fighting the beast.
So I clasp happiness while it exists.
Almond crowns bloom so briefly.
One day they’re white, the next, green.
Rebecca works in the fluorescent night.
In the afternoons, she photographs
the clapping, breathing trees.
There Are Times
Today, when I could be writing,
I sit waiting for a nurse to access me
(that is, puncture me with a needle).
I cannot work because of the talk,
the cold room, the television’s jabber.
The microwave smells of grease and burn.
I want words, but my mind stalls.
Too much blabbering, too many bells.
Staring into the IV’s neutral blue gaze,
I search for an apt metaphor for poetry:
my burning eye, my bride, my thread.
I’m not sure whether I’ve given up
on words, or whether they’ve deserted me.
I’m in the sea, there’s no comfort
in the tides, my spit tastes of saline.
Department Meeting
Tragedy won’t stop the world’s drone.
Weekly meetings continue, typed agendas
shuffled on the table like the Dead Sea’s tides.
Illness remains impolite among colleagues.
When I mention cancer, the eyes around me lower.
The woman to my right pushes up her glasses.
The woman to my left nods vaguely, pen hovering.
