An Elegy: To Loss

The Fall is here—
Time for stockings, mittens on cold evenings.
You lost a mitten on your way home.
You cried because it was your favorite—
Red. The last straw
After Grandma and the kitten.

The leaves have left their place in the trees.
We crush them underfoot
As we walk the sidewalks to school and back
Home, searching for your red mitten
Amongst the red leaves.
We don’t find it.

You sigh and we return to the white house,
The green trim—
To Mother and Father and split-pea soup.

The Turn of the Centuries

I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright.
Henry Vaughan
“The World”

Eternity unfolds before me, the multi-foliate Rose of all time,
or no time. It takes no time at all.
All ‘round the Rose is a whirlwind of stars, the firm foundation
ever revolving, the earth on it’s axis
hurtling through space, a place,
or not a place. It takes no place at all.
A wave of light emanates from the Rose, piercing the pores of the world—
it bursts into particles of crystal glass, forming a gold-flecked mosaic
underneath the backdrop of the deep
blue sky over the small Italian town.
Inside the church, the priest pronounces the words
of Institution, and the universe becomes still—
time and space are focused on a place.
As the Sanctus Bell rings—three times—
the bells in the steeple ring out in the town,
alerting all who hear to be attentive
to the presence of Christ
in the holy mysteries,
in that time,
in that place,
echoing through all of space,
hearkening back to the Light who created it.

Revolutions

“That light is both a particle and a wave,”
He sung as he beat his stick against the board’
“Is known for certain by at least the few
Most influential scientists today.”
But light is that through which we read our story
In the pictured windows of our Western Church.
And West wraps round to meet the East again
And science becomes poetry in the end.
 
Light is both a particle and a wave
States the mysterious confidence of science.
But light is only joy that comes through clouds
That first creates and then illumines shape.
It is the gold that springs from everywhere
And shadows half the world.

#2 [revised]

Hannah is in the kitchen
In her red dress, cooking
With Marlene,
Their feet padding
On the dirt-brown floor.
St. Joan in the window
Looks down on them and smells
The onions and sausage
Frying in the pan,
Heating the afternoon.

Ode to 90638

In the backyard there is a swimming pool
and a vast expanse of cement stretching wall to wall
and the walls are bricks cemented together
in tones of white and grayish-red—
then there’s the bushes.
They creep over the walls and weeds
spring through the cracks in the ground.
Here you have a choice—to fill your yard—
The lawn or the swimming pool.
The swimming pool is blue with bugs and leaves in it
and the light reflects in glowing puddles
on the awning in the morning.

The Appeal

Heresy and I went walking
in a garden aflame with light--
he had his sunglasses on.

Two Poems

#1

St. George is on the wall
Slaying his dragon
Underneath the portrait
Of the Blessed Virgin
Lined in gold.
Outside, the traffic grumbles as it goes by.

#2

Hannah is in the kitchen
In her red dress, cooking
With Marlene
On the dirt brown floor.
St. Joan in the window
Looks down on them and smells
The onions and sausage
Frying in the pan,
Heating the afternoon.