The television screen illuminates
the mahogany walls of His Holiness’ office
so different and distant from Marta’s casa in Iguazu,
Argentina, her handwriting in Spanish,
pleading the Holy Father from cheap paper,
to return and attend to his people.

On the screen, he sees the Garganta del Diablo
exploding in what the headline calls
‘Biblical-style’ deluge.
But He knows that the devil’s throat
spills out a more subtle evil than flooding:
a secret hatred,
disjointed humanity,
greed and gluttony
and outpour of passion of futbol
rather than prayer.

My child, he writes,
these falls bless the earth--
only God causes the floodgates to open
and only together do we feel holy presence
in the river’s spray.

He licks his finger, turns over the page,
and decides he needs not write more, besides
Que Dios bendiga a tí y a Argentina.
As the television flashes scenes of his pueblo y futbol.

Nov 2016 - The Fall Line


~

all the lines of man-made yellows,
so tempting threatening...inviting,
the subway platform, the street curb,
the highway divide
the double parallel equal sign that has no solution,
remaining hopelessly empty,
defining the watery soluble
inequality of null

~~

The Fall Line

first heard the phrase months ago in Argentina,
standing before the c-shaped Iguazu Falls

the fall line
where the crystalline basement rock
erodes away the oncoming soft sedimentary,
there, where,
a waterfall is nature-gifted

so intuitive, so obvious,
what else to call the water's owned edge,
line of demarcation,
where we grow captivated,
mesmerized, knee weak,
traumatized and tantalized

knew that instant when spoken,
The Fall Line,
saw inarguable symmetry to so many lives,
would be a someday poem

selective service phrases stored and
someday up recalled,
a thousand, maybe more,
waiting for the confluence of
time and place,
to be a mother

letting my fluid sac burst,
giving birth to a concoction symphonic,
the emotions waterfalling, cascading,
the precision, vision seconds,
when words

pour, gush, surge, spill,
stream, flow, issue, spurt

~~~

silently crafted in the weeks and months prior,
the unconscious drowning in ache and pain
of suffocating drudge sludge of everyday living

all the lines of man made yellows,
so tempting threatening...inviting
the subway platform, the street curb,
the highway divide
the double parallel equal sign that has no solution remaining empty, defining the inequality of null

the vision infection of the majestic fall line,
so accessible in an instance of overwhelm,
cornea implanted, the sounding call of sweet blissful
whatever

one more additional addiction unshakeable,
jumping from fall line to fall line,
it's the game I am played,
but the controller
is not in my possess

for the joy stick that drives my actions,
toys with me,
the human fool jumping
from fall line to fall line,
unsure of what he desires,

salvation or saving
11/26/16