Gray day, dry day. A front
blowing in hard from the west. Good Friday. My walk to church
winds through construction. Dirt work.
Earth-breaker. Earth-mover. Huge blade
peeling the ground, scalping caliche to level a wild field for building.
Billowing dust fogs the road ahead of me until the man in a silver hat
pressing and tilting the joysticks sees me
and pauses to let me pass
so the wind will not choke me.
He waves, I wave, our two hands
tearing the veil between us.
on Calvary . . .
as the song so goes,
for My Son
could
have called
10,000 angels, although
in reality just
one could have
verily turned the tide;
like where was
gabriel on
that desultory
late afternoon . . .
sunless, about
to be Sonless.
then again
as the song so goes
further along
but He died alone,
for you . . . and me
although I’d’ve
rather’d some other
Way; save when I
signed on
to be
His Mom
You are gone, Lord, but I am still hanging.
Though I cannot fathom your agony,
surely you know mine. How can I be free
of your pain and you of my pain?—one wing
wounded is two wings that are un-flying,
even if the bird sings in perfect key.
Once you hung as now I hang, and I see
in your living my own dying dying
to your life of dying on the cross I
now hang on—You forsaken by Yourself
that I may never be forsaken—I
do not hang alone, as You did Yourself:
Raphael, Italian (Umbrian) 1483–1520, tempera and oil on wood
How happily I, Saint Peter, slept, beside the others
while Christ sweated blood, asking the Father
to take the cup from Him. And then—He never asked—
the angel came, the angel strengthened Him,
positioned in the sky, wings of flame.
Now I pass the poem, oranged with fire,
to my namesake, Peter Cooley.
He’ll tell you why you’re reading this.
What does it mean to hold sorrow like hammered nails?
What does it mean to carry the grave as a hammering chest?
I see your heart split into blue and gray by the embrace of thorns,
watch your face fold into a grimace as you watch this cross
-road, this moment when you choose between wine and blood.
And I picture you—bright sonflower embracing this darkness,
2021
In early February, winter gray,
Stretching sky high from the early morning earth,
Begins again, slowly, to melt away.
Slowly, invisibly almost. Too slight
A pale to promise sun, much less rebirth.
I can’t this instant help but see the light.
Not light so much as edges coming clear;
Not clear at all, thick mist obscures the dawn.
Streetlights unlit, buildings poised to appear,
Low storefronts and a tall brick bank—I see
Faint outlines on the brink of being gone,
Less with my eyes than with my memory.
One early spring in Illinois,
startled by the foreign sight
of pelicans upon dark water,
we stopped to stare, my mother
and I, at such ungainly awkward
birds—the males with their red-
knobbed bills, flat drooping sacks
of wrinkled skin—watching as
they took to flight, laborious,
a clumsy sight, until, airborne,
they were transformed.
She was waiting in mask and gloves
for the next in line
in a trailer at the COVID testing site,
her rhinestone sandals not visible
but I knew her
by the soft curve of her shoulder
and called her name.
She said as she swabbed
the inside of my nose,
my eyes tearing up,
It’s a shame we can’t hug.
As we did when she came
to lift and wipe and wash
my husband in his prison body,
sometimes bringing her polite boy
who slept on the couch in his clothes.