writer & poet
They congregate in rows –
twos and threes
and some perching lonely,
on the cracked concrete curbs
lining the neighborhood.
They bow their heads,
or stare forward, or murmur
in tongues. Some only breathe
in the incense of our dust, breathe
out another prayer
for those who no longer breathe.
I know it –
the weariness that makes all the world
a pew, all the sky a sanctuary,
every corner invocation.
We have long
desired to come to rest
in the house of the Lord.
We limped the last length of the year,
A year full of what could be
A year full of what wasn’t,
And the snapped promises of the past linger now
At the brink of another.
I am here, preparing for the plunge,
My breath fogging the future,
Glaring down the precipice to locate hand-holds,
Avoiding the inevitable.
This old year opened, like those before, with glint promise.
Years shouldn’t make promises they can’t keep.
The new year waits in an icy womb,
When color is drained, like the blood of the earth, into seedling veins.
We bubble with the announcement,
But she is now not yet among us
In the flesh of bud and blood of bloom.
Warmth rolls stones from crimson tombs,
And the dead will be born again.
Isn’t there inherent hope
In dawning, of things doing,
As there is in dusk, of death?
We are children of the promise
Long before we penetrate it.
We must live to the last before we begin.
Let the new things live a little.
Let the old things die.
Let all of it matter more, remembered and anticipated,
Pressed down, shaken together, running over,
An invocation,
A benediction,
A word.