Father Mckenzie  

Turk’s Head teased my shadow
free last evening along the arroyo

our separation minute yet
edging toward the clement lip

accruing like the thunder eggs
I keep in a jar by the door

God long since departed, drifted
away on the high desert wind

that drew us here long ago
rifled pages of the Book Of Common Prayer.

A sodden breeze from home last night
a tang of salt, a churchyard hush

low plaint of cello’s lurking around
these adobe walls for a way inside

my callow words returned to claim
their hollow sound and mouth

all that was left unsaid
an old man darning socks

in the night when nobody’s there
crossing the room to leave

the door ajar to old sermons
bible black sky pierced with diamonds.

Our function is to question all
To challenge the bitter , the sweet , the very footprints we leave
We lay in Spring primrose valleys requesting the dirge of hard Winter with odd forethought
We pen the macabre , the obscene and the refusal , providing a chart for the self righteous imbecile , the lay and the lost , we are new today but very well called upon tomorrow* ...

My mother was a writer.
I remember her,
papers spread out upon a bed sheet in the sand,
stacked pebbles protecting her work from the wind
as I made drip-castles at the water's edge
and braided crowns from wild poppies.
I would run to her so she could
rub grape sunscreen into my sandy shoulders
and I asked her once,
“Mama,
is that poetry?”
and she said “No little one,
you are poetry,
this only tries to be.”
and I thanked her,
and ran back to the water
to search for flat stones to skip,
and thought no more of poetry.

The ghosts of old raindrops
mock and scold.
Their scorn writ large
on these dusty roads and in these dusty throats.
To tote the barge but not lift the bail
ain't no kind of protest.
Spit in the well and
hope the master draws up that bucket-full.
Wishes.
Still, the giver of life
serpentines through this valley
like the Euphrates did
in that one book, but
it does not matter
since the scythe swings
in such wide circles
this time of year.
We can bring in sheaves until dusk
then fish for men in the morning but
our souls are still corrupted.
Our hearts are rotten like old pears.
I'm so thirsty.

Do you remember
The fairy tales we spun
On those blazing summer noons
When the road tar was melting
And we bunked classes
To be under the forest flame
Shadowed from the world outside
When we thought time would be immortal
As you wiped the sweats from my forehead
And with every thread of yarn
I would grip you harder
In an effort to prevent gravity
From letting those moments fall
Into the abyss of memories.

Do your eyes still see the Prince
That never took you away
When you tell your grandkids
The fairy tales?