broad daylight, a narrow highway...
what brought you there, sans your sour nocturnal song?
a racing rabbit I couldn't see
but you could smell?

and could you tell
how close my bumper
came to you when you scampered
across the road?

you had to feel
the wind of my wake
and hear the heavy hum
my tires make

though that did not signal
a close call with death to you;
only a sound you couldn't decipher,
and a tickling of hackle hairs

how delightful to be unawares
of the fickle sickle of mortality
that could have chopped you to pieces
on a hot stretch of asphalt

the boy enters when he knows
others will not be there
in prayer--their silent entreaties
to a god he is not sure
listens or cares

morning after mass is best;
the bouquets are fresh
he can smell them once
the scent of the early
worshipers fades:

the pipe smoke from the old man's
coat
the widow's perfume which lingers longer than the ammonia stench
of the holy homeless who is there
every day

Christ watches over this:
a white marble man bolted
to a cross, witnessing
this spectacle for millennia

long before this cold statue
was placed in this cathedral,
he was there, the slaughtered lamb
cursed to die again and again

that is how the boy sees it;
not a promised life eternal,
but the same death anon,
anon

the pounding of the stakes,
the blood offering: the old man, the woman, the mendicant
all crucifying him again with
each plaintive prayer

once their odors fade,
the funeral sprays, the bouquets
remain--cut, dying flowers,
a fragrant impermanence
with no expectation for life
beyond their time in the
vase--no imploring a godhead
for forgiveness

no demand for blood
and perpetual death

only a little water for their brief journey
in fragile glass

I see his pick up in the yard--the grass is dead
from the heat anyway

he is nowhere to be found, except
passed out on the seat

with one of his feet touching the turf
the other still in the truck

afraid if it joins its partner on solid soil
it won't be a happy marriage

he is my child--all quarter century of him
and he won't bring in the paper

I am sure he rolled his truck on top of it...to protect me
from the news of an awful world

I hope I wouldn't smash my thumb
or throw it

through the picture window, like my neighbor did,
just yesterday,

while I was mowing my grass
which is yet half high

because I had to watch while the police arrested
my hammer heaving pal

who hates his unfaithful wife, his yapping Chihuahua,
and his life;

the spouse and spunky canine
are just fine it seems,

fortunate there was glass to shatter
on a Saturday afternoon

roadkill diners
Texas highway cleaners
a swooping trio of you--a blue
black choreography

what
had you spotted
on the hot
asphalt?

in a decade
of seconds, you
vanished--or actually
I did, leaving a wake
of you in my own
wake:

a shimmering heat mirage
in a rearview mirror, a memory
more mythical than your feast

I watch them
walk in: slow, not quite *****

white beard on one,
double chin on another

I estimate their seasons--an
appraiser assessing damages

of gravity and grief, cells
dividing, multiplying without relief

I was a lanky, lurching teen
when they were yet in diapers

soon, they'll be clad
in such humble attire again

I'll be there waiting, already
accustomed to such leaking humility

they dine there Saturdays;
once the dire discussion of
which entrees to order is over, there
is mostly silence between them

and a candle that burns

on every table--wax trails
on the wine bottles which
cradle them; creating a grand grotto
of paraffin they take turns fondling  

gone are those nights

when their hands locked
across the gingham, their eyes
seeing through the fire, blind to
any shadow it cast on the other

the light remains,

though now they see
only beneath it, a biography of
burnt offerings on the wine's empty
flask,  a meal soon to be forgotten