Month: April 2013

Night Choir
for my granddaughter
Lengths of linked wrought iron stakes, wary
sentinels, cloister the quiet graves.
Wind presses, lifts inside the cemetery,
leads a rising plainsong. Shadow stave
of granite headstones – quarried notes flung far
from the giant pine tree clef – rides
the swell, credo to the stenciled stars,
echo to their spheres. Alexis slides
her small smooth hand in mine – aloof,.
dark, the mass that looms ahead, I tell her,
will resolves as edge and line of chapel roof
come day. Still, she skirmishes with fear.
Kyrie, grant her immunity –
in time, we must construe immensity.

Wind relents against my barn in drifts
that sway like sheets pegged to a line, scours
a patch of ground behind the house, now lifts
the fan tailed hawk. Riding to devour,
his shadow darkens the snow-sealed tunnel
where mouse has hungered its translucent blue
way across the upper field – runnel
of roots, thistle and grass under new
crust that passing pads of fox and mink
belie. Safely stored till noon heat digs
to peel space from fallen branch, link
a secret embroidery of budding twigs,
survivor’s fragile dare unmask. Wanderer
snatched, flung limp, and softly plundered.