Poetry

She was right about this place, the unforgiving winter months sullen, sunless, bitter, but then spring a dream God has and lets us slumber in until October.

In the moments after she has told the patient he has cancer, the prognosis threatening to slit the room’s throat, papers and charts in her hands and he, silent, looks up—who is she?

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.