Poetry

She'd tell us "our bodies are not made of stone" so treat them like flesh.

No one to place the potted lilies in a semicircle.

Then I saw the tree—dead, fallen years before, limbs snapped raw like broken bones, its trunk a shroud-less corpse still teeming with life.

I measure, saw, drill, and rummage for more scrap wood, the garage air redolent with the sudden grace of Christmas tree, the gift of century-old spruce when cut.

God touches my mouth and promises, "I'll give you words and fill your head with wisdom. I'll never desert you."

I drive into the plains when the moon is full.

The beasts walk single file, saying hallelujah, eating bones.

Today the prayer is words I can't yet find, words that flit away like spring juncos, like chickadees.

And if we speak at all, let's speak in mountain, speak in field ...