The Puritan

The Puritan

Her girlhood game of spinning to fall tilted onto fresh cut grass
in snail-paced ancient wonder. This was the miracle
how gravity could hold her. A force grounded counter-
balanced. The perceived stillness of a flying planet
across the arc of time she emptied her calendar
found herself lost her mind. No plan came true
through years of shelter greed justice
crime only a world giving birth to night and day
draw death from life between her suburban church
to the shattered earth her hymnal hit the floor in ordinary time

Ophelia

Ophelia

What if time really were a river?
The Nile, maybe the Amazon and the Mississippi too
All three tied together tail to mouth
Mouth to tail around our lonesome globe
We could travel waves of cherished books
Always another page left to turn
The horizon tuned to play our favorite song
Without a final phrase

The Morning of Her Passing

Portfolio Out of Nature

I cried with a banshee wind released
to run through elder trees
stripped bare by northern songs

the brown oak leaves
down bitter breeze blown
through footprint caves in snow

the girl I was touched fire
once, to wish on ghosts of flame
this frost burns the same

covet with the wind my limbs
frozen extend to grip the pallid sky
yet the geese migrate they fly

while life is lifted I’m left behind
to watch the wild winged escape
on the breath she took to die

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