When a Seed Falls
When all creation’s worked its way
back and darkness lies again
on the surface of the deep,
what will be good?
The seed falls in darkness
on a winter field:
moon-splattered,
months past mower-mutilated,
the ragged stubble of
Earth’s rended hair
now ash-heaped.
Snow settles—
heavy and wet, it builds and it covers—
landscape lost in the contours.
Hay and harvest forgotten fade
to peace, smothering for a while
the promised burst
of flowers and leaves
reaching again towards heaven.
It will be good,
even though the seed that falls and dies
in ice and ash must be a while
apart.
This separation
is each person’s lot—
to know it and
name it; to hate it
and endure it—
still we love
despite it and hope
beyond it,
because over the pallid ice
hangs the sky’s wool blanket:
stitches stretched thin to show
pinpricks of light. Bright eternity
of silver, pale and startling,
looms beyond.
Aide’s Elegy
I have no time for grief:
unlike the ones who come and go,
calling me “Angel.” Oh,
because I changed Depends
and ran warm cloths
over sagging skin.
“Jewels in your crown, dear. Bless you.”
Rifling through newsprint for a
virgin crossword, I paused
at the flash of a familiar face,
ink-smudged, smiling from a time before here.
And the grim block of text
did not say she cheated at bingo
or hummed loudly while she ate
or tucked so many tissues up her sleeves
to puff them to the elbow,
or woke at night in grief
at her infant daughter’s death—
the horror refreshed by time’s ragged unwinding.
It did not say she leaned her elbow
on the nurse’s station
and attempted to converse in garbled tongues.
It did not say she liked to hoard cupcakes
—found molding among her nylons—
or stole her neighbor’s compression socks,
the nurses’ pens and washcloths
or grabbed my arm and chuckled under her breath
while she paced the short hall
and assured me:
“there’s money enough in the bank for laughter.”
***