Winged Life

     for MW

I.

Purple smudge majesty, clouds 

Hardened into colors the 

Shape of indecision, still

Stranded between rain and sun, 

Where hope burrows deep within 

Shades of red, pink, orange, brown,

The past stacked in so many 

Years, hard and fast against all

But wind and water, these 

Persistent chords of desert 

Music scattered aimlessly.  

Blue purple patches of wet

Sky struggle somewhere between  

Today and tomorrow.  A 

Cloud lingers—forgiving

Iridescent rain blurred out 

In the distance where little 

Grows yet rich with life, always.

The desert is not solace,

Comfort.  It strips to reveal 

Nothing, denies home, promise,

Salvation, yields an endless

Expansion, geography  

Displaced, ghosts and nomads who

Wander abandoned, forsworn.  

II.

Three days on the train, hawks on 

Every tenth pole, so many 

Dead, and one vast junkyard dump, 

Cars so old trees grown through them.

Tilden and Connecticut,

Eighteen degrees, clear blue, wind.

The sun retreats from the sky.

A homeless man shot at the 

White House.  Bihać, Chechnya,

The Brookline Clinic.  Always

A shooting to read about, 

Makes criminals of us all.

She always leaves in morning,

Cuts out chess pieces in her 

Purple floral dress, enough

Time to tell living between

Black and white divides the pairs.  

III.

The sun sears away the flesh

From what remains, desiccates 

Memory into dust that 

Mingles soil and sun-dried bone, 

A place mark, after thought of

A presence transformed absence.   

Everyone knows the story 

Of a strong beautiful bug 

Come out from the dry leaf of 

An old apple-tree table 

That stood in a kitchen for 

Sixty years.  An egg laid in 

The living tree many years 

Ago hatched perchance by the 

Heat of an urn.  Who knows what 

Beautiful and winged life—for

Ages buried in layers

Of concentric wood—may come 

Forth from the most trivial 

Furniture of daily life. 

I eat rich brown soil, red clay

Mud, sandy loam, the needle

Thick forest floor.  I stare at 

The bone white moon, eyes closed.  Scraps 

Of train yard rust leach into 

Blood.  Firefly flashes light the

Interiors of fear, and 

Cicadas drone without cease.