I was three, four--surely no more
we marched through the old city, I
mostly on father's shoulders, a place
I was perched so often back then  

of a thousand dry seas on the moon's
pocked face, only one my father chose to wed  
with a bomb crater: Mare Ingenii

to others, you were but a mammoth hole,
ill-timed casualty of the bombers wrath,
but Dad named you for a barren basin
on the dark side of the moon  

eons later, I was an ancient ten,
and John Glenn spun thrice around the globe
I then asked if we would live to see the real you,  
an astronomically sculpted scoop, two hundred
arctic black miles across  

dad said of course,
and I believed him, especially
after I asked when, and he said
a billion years ago

strangers,
we shared a bench, stories  
while I watched my grandsons play
he gazed at the twirling leaves
an autumnal symphony
ascending        

in one day it will be November  
he proclaimed, and one ancient “all saints day”
he had reported for induction into a congregation,
one he would never forget    

I had been in the same flock  
though seasons later and what my eyes
had seen had long since been tucked away
behind wedding marches, my children clawing
their way into the brave new world, and
those boys now frolicking before me

I do not know what he saw  
or what things he still carried  
to the battlefield of today    

but he never blinked at passers by  
and when the sun would break the clouded sky  
he would pause mid sentence, mid breath
to ask what I could never answer    

where did the flowers go,
when had the trees shed their leaves
and why was I still staring at lads in play
this day, All Hallows Eve, and would we
all be here tomorrow?

for that girl at a concert in 1968*

she shed her clothes
in a moment's abandon
and danced naked
before the swaying crowd

she was young
she was beautiful
she was a vision
of possibility

she must be
approaching 70 now

she is someone's
grandmother

she spends her days
in sweats feeling her
knee replacement ache

were she to suddenly
dance naked in public
her children
would commit her

still, sometimes
in her secret heart
she imagines
doffing her clothes
and twirling
once again
within the music
of a more generous time
before her world
was damaged beyond
recovery

she imagines,
but she doesn't

   ~mce

Forgiveness is the perfume a flower leaves on the shoe that crushed it.