1. Star and Candle
1.
Passed by the final ray
of a burnt-out star,
we become afterlight.
2.
Beside a waxy puddle
we are crumbled ash,
offering a curl of smoke.
3.
Sanctity and sacrifice
teach us
to persist.
2. The Economics of Time and Need
I wanted love that would last
until February.
But it was only March.
The longer I waited,
the more I hungered
for such a gift,
which became less dear
as time passed,
because I needed less of it.
Hunkered down
at the end of this endless year,
I wait still.
3. Cover Your Eyes
And listen to the wind.
Not its complaints unsettling leaves,
but its stillness—
an apology
murmuring through pin oaks,
the moment it subsides.
4. Clearing Ivy
Its roots felt their way across my skin
looking for soft spots,
probably digging in wherever
it was easiest. Who’s to say?
With unforgiving tedium,
it crept
and wound
and clutched
dislodging mortar in a retaining wall
and bending a trunk under its weight.
Inevitability has no need to rush.
Miles of twisting gnarled vine
grip until
barehanded and bloody-knuckled
you rip and scrape away at the aftermath
revealing little claw marks
etched into its path.
5. Surely
He bent to her whisper,
his posture a devotional.
6. Tempo
Where
love
beats
slow
with
dull
and
thud
of
heart-
ache,
let
grace
cascade
tumbling glistening abundance
over dry rocks
sprout
greenly in crag and furrow,
seeding abandoned meadows
with flowers
orbit—
slowly and majestically—
radiating love and joy
upon your face.
7. Elegy for 107696
Not memorials. Not reliquaries.
Just two test tubes and a jar
holding your bone, hair, and skin
relegated to storage these 70 years—
a cross-referenced testament
to Hirt’s cruel anthropology.
Oh purest spirit,
without apology, God himself
knelt in honor or grief
and lifted you upon his wings
your unyielding remnants
hovering among spirits
of distilled alcohol
until their final return.
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