DiaBLOGue

Lying on the table, 
he was as handsome 
as the day he had taken her 
through the veil. 

Her body was cold, nearly 
frigid in the room 
set aside for such matters. 

When dawn comes this early, 
a slice of sky visible from my bed 
textures waking. Today’s thin layers clabber 
white . . .

A day of long-walked silences, 
waterless red gullies and hard-rock 
plateaus. We’ve met few on the trails 
this summer past my father’s dying. 

In the dim green 
I can’t tell what I’m remembering, 
or what’s been handed down. . . .

A cold spell 
for my desecration 
slipped upward from your grave. 

Spring again. 
The browns, the ochre, 
the brittle death of fall and winter 
recast in transcendent greens— 
            vibrant, transparent, resurgent. 

A girl I’ve never met meets me at the door, 
whines at my leg until I hold her. Thin arms, 
thin mouth, a sour smell I overlook while fetching 
crayons, glue sticks, snacks. She lifts her dress, 
exposes the top of her baggy white tights, looks at me.
We both sing: “Faith is knowing the sun will rise…”
I sit next to her, tap her hands, whisper no.