KODAK Digital Still Camera
i paint frescoes on the walls of the old church
where the congregation all say their prayers
out back under stone
and stars
inside stained glass shards
fall
evenly before the shadow of the once and future
crucifix
altars altered by dust and age
ashes to ashes
we all fall down
I like to sleep in a dark room
and there is nowhere dark tonight
with that great vernal moon moving about the night sky.
I can almost hear her, a subtle shirring sound
like I think the workings of an old swiss watch would sound,
tiny golden gears and levers and the motion of a tiny pendulum
gliding so softly back and forth.
I can feel the tidal pull of her deep in my body,
like I imagine a pregnancy would feel
in my old woman uterus-less body,
a body that has never felt that urgent pull
of life in a moonful belly, swollen with light,
never holding an amniotic sluiced child
seconds from her rising up, born moonfaced,
howling moonsongs of all animal young.
Moon light is gliding across the water
as easily as Jesus,
what was he thinking, this moon of a Man-God,
to walk across the stormy sea
and reach out to calm
moon pulled waves under his nailed soled feet.
Moon man, man in the moon, but I know she is a woman.
Only a woman walks from window to window
in the middle of the night,
checking on her children and pulling
her light cotton robe around her shoulders,
padding on worn through soled slippers
that make the faintest shirring sound
gliding so softly against the floor.
its the disappearing
graying of temples
and long standing walls
leaning now on their memories
how quickly they leave
disappearing in
neglect, left to collect dust
on old photographs and letters
they were here once
busy like you, late to work
and laughing, making love
and meals, raising their voices
and children, living
ah, there’s the rub
the dead are left to their own devices
playing bridge and counting clouds
leaving the living to go around
in their immortal mortality
while the ashes cool
and death never takes a holiday
There was a little girl that had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good, she was very, very good
And when she was bad, she was horrid.
-Nursery rhyme
coarser – its texture somehow thicker yet thinner
straight as the proverbial board most days
unless the deep southern summer humidity
ties it in the memory of brown ringlets
the first time it was licensed –
the girl behind the counter
changed the designation
(no longer chestnut brown
with gay auburn highlights,
luscious chocolate velvet
deep and soulful)
saying “I call ‘em like I see’ em.”
the end of that identity
clouds of tarnished silver linings
pewter and iron, steeled locks
brushed nickel
and mercury dimes
in the fogged, foxed mirror
she was once very, very good
and happily horrid
when the occasion merited
and still can conjure up a curl or two
when the mood suits her
rubbing the worry stones
until my bones wear
down to the contour of the river
stones rubbed smooth
set into the shore
filling in the bank
where the heron watches
and the beaver take
the young saplings
tender and pliant
I was once that green
and could bend like the willows
weeping at the edge of the water
their tears filling
the deep blue holes
where the old catfish hide
she sits
translucent
somehow
smaller
each year
transformed
blue rivers
of veins pulse
in her hands
that once held such power
and music
her charm still present
in flashing green eyes
or is it hazel
or now
gray
weather warms or chills
with those eyes
as it always has
in our orbit
around her
gravity
I smile because after thirty something years together
in the bathroom mirror
he still sees that twenty-eight year old young man
I married.
but his twenty-six year old bride
does not gaze back at me
I see
each silver hair
reflect from the mirrored surface
each pound and line
stark realities of time
sometimes I’m startled
not recognizing the image
as Self
but another Woman
(sometimes mother
and now
even grandmother)
She
stares back at me
from the bathroom mirror
And I smile
thecourseofourseasons 