Even in old age they still produce fruit
these holy souls reaching beyond
the lapses and losses of the body.
In the bountiful boughs and leaves
of threefold-rooted olive trees,
palms and cedars, they find
the legacy from the creator
to his creation, freedom
from the bondage of desiccated time.
An old woman wrinkled with years
has eyes as lustrous as Aegean coral
holding the hope of rapture.
—St. Meinrad Archabbey
Forgive me my faults, my faults, my grievous faults,
she recites with the Benedictines preparing
for evening’s darkening shroud—
her husband’s figure standing erect
in her memory, his finger pointing at her,
threatening her, his once-sure vows
now dead, their hazy specters
prowling the hallways of her heart,
their long fingernails raking its walls.
In her right hand she clutches red and purple
wildflowers, her long flaxen hair tumbling
from its bun, her slender fingers laced
in his burly fingers, trying to knit one
understanding between them as they run
on a white-sand California beach
toward the camera, toward me, who
once taught them how metaphor can snag
and hold the world.
“You can’t go back,” my mother always said.
But human nature does the opposite.
(Of course, this happens, but inside your head.)
Unspill your coffee? Leave your words unsaid?
The jeans from years ago will suddenly fit!
“You can’t go back,” my mother always said,
And she was right. The dead are not undead,
And traumas still will need a tourniquet.
(Of course, this happens, but inside your head.)
You want your moments cut and edited.
You want the bliss, and not the deep regret.
“You can’t go back,” my mother always said.
Rainbow or no rainbow,
I’d have gotten drunk too,
more than a year lost,
an ark full of animals,
the whole earth renewed.
What better cause
for celebration,
what better way
than wine, sure sign
new life can spring
from destruction, the way
grapes must be crushed,
their juice fermented
to be filled with spirit.
I find my seat
on a gray plank and grasp
stout rope tied
to a sycamore branch. Leaning
back, I pump
till I’m lifting off over barbed wire,
dusty beans,
six-foot corn, my legs stretched to spin
the rusty
rooster’s arrows. I reach for what I see and
what I don’t—
The wind in my face whispers, Esther, Esther.
Or is it you,
my heart, pumping as I pump that speaks? “I’m here,”
I say, like faithful
Samuel answered in the darkness. Leaning into the arms
of this world
After a time of writing
I stop to let my mind breathe.
This is necessary, otherwise
the thoughts turn gray and
drift.
Even God had to rest
after creating.
Sometimes I go to the hushed
margins of the woods
where the afternoon light is
distilled in mist.
Where it is so quiet I can hear
drips falling on the hands
of the vine maples.
In the spaces between the drops
I wait listening.
Her tattoos, her way of pulling back her lips
the way a stallion does when he won’t take
the bit.
In the corner, last row she sleeps,
her nose ring, low cut shirt—
as I talk
on about Wordsworth, trying to unlock
the longing that is reading.