Love in Winter

Holding shards and staring
at a charcoal shadow
where a fire lay, an aftermath
of flame, the heat of something fierce
long days past, holding onto
his small rubbing stones
thumbing polished veins
Pollock might have modeled
a tracery of schemes, schisms
since abandoned never healed
these crystals taunt the eye
the depth of stone exceeding
imagination’s limits in an interval of galaxies
a spiraled inward logic, trace
the surface fall full in
to never understand
the route to where these veins
might run, following what Möbius he chose all so deliberately.

When the hideous resumes
the act of breathing seeming sin
one can retreat to palming these
bewildered, shifting through the marks
he would play upon the quiet day.
Unskilled trowel, loving hands
buttering one brick a day
patient furrowed oxen brow
to work at laying ink to build
a world for him though cenotaphic
words are this day’s only jewels.

Beyond this box cut canyon
where light leaves way too early,
if you can see beyond

enigma in true form you may
know mine your brother’s smile
still further out those others

still tangled in our manic fears
squabbling at the water hole
for privilege as we think of it

yet understand forgiveness
of oneself should still be possible
–you are the highest tide

I’ve floated on, so cavalier
to deny yourself, despairing
to cast your lot with words

a sputtered text well bettered
by a rendering in chisel point
soft pencil strokes against

the paper’s grain you could
have drawn with insight.
–and I would see you shine

the whitest over-sun
take up some quiet refuge, fade
companioned to the stone.

Replace this strange monastic cant with something to be built
for you! Some glory

familiar to us all, small space
where prayer’s more easily heard
your memory be better served

in shade beneath broad oaks
a flowered branch across a path
a fading purple evening.




Days like broken stones
edging this red canyon
so few traces left remaining

cairns like parchment verse
living seasons in a tangle
the year is rushing wind

his stones I cannot talk to
and I am no further on.
Prayer, an incense stick

a modest spiraled smoke, one-way
communion with the absent
still I burn for my religion.