Echo, Call and Response

To be alone is to be alive.

Echo:
To be alive is to be alone.

Call and response:

    To be alive
           is to be.
    To be alone
           is to be.

     To be
           is
               two.
Be.
   

Memorial

Still and slender spines arc
Across an aching field -
A crowd of wounded warriors
Silenced.

I could lose myself in such a sky -
Fierce and bright and pale with longing,
Shivering on the bare fringe
      of tree-top nerve-endings.

Above a frost-tipped nest of lace,
The mute trails of smoke
Find their slow way
Homeward.

Warmth

When we came in from the cold
Arms like icicles in soggy snowsuits
Ready for cocoa and French toast,
Mom was prepared
To thaw us out
Head to toe.

Lips of Cake

Clever ladies
With lips of cake
Drown their thoughts
In wine and sweets,
Tossing away
Wilted night.

Rain Is My Faith

Rain is my faith,
Downpour my dogma.
I preach puddles
And meditate on mist.

Rain is my faith.
I'm the shaman of showers,
The prophet of clouds,
The theologian of thunder.

Rain is my faith.
I am blessed by the deluge,
Baptized in floods,
Penitent to rainbows.

Rain is my faith.
Doxologies drizzle in my downspouts

And sweet spring drops fall like the sacrament
On my tongue.

Rain is my faith
And, while all pilgrims doubt,
The enemy of my faith
Is drought.

My Grandmother's Face

At last I understand
My grandmother's face -
The pinched-brow frown,
The sour lemon expression,
Even at rest.
Life is more than laughter.
Five decades have pinched my brow, too.

The Big D

A dark horseman's silhouette
Against a dull steel sky,
Cruel piranhas nibbling
At my identity,
A thick bog through which I wade,
Leaden shackles on my wrists,
A shadow self,
A rain-drenched heart,
A smoke-filled soul,
A fog-blocked mind,
My hard, weighty companion
Wrapped in an inky cloak,
Lurking, leaping,
Stalking, seeping,
Taunting, beating,
Down my doors.
A long season of rockslides,
A battering by boulders,
A gray-gowned spectre
Who watches at windows.
A stop.
A halt.
A marrow-deep exhaustion.
A dove-colored shroud
Whose stingy threads
Strain paltry remnants of sunlit life.
This is the Big D.
All
Bow
Down.