Peace Offering

The citizens must have been sleeping
when bombs rained on Rouen, the Law Courts’
flamboyant façade impervious to its riddled past.
I reflect back to the late 40s. A child then,
I loved roses, red-flamed like holly berries.
I came to France this week to find peace
among half-timbered houses and stone cathedrals.
It’s hard to pull away from this square,
my mind slow to digest horror on a scale this grand.
I had not been born when shrapnel scarred
this building, gouging giant holes, some large
enough to protect birds. The Courts
with their pinnacles and flying buttresses
transform into angry flames, the afterglow
of steel veiled in smoke like blackened stars.
War is like this: Earth suspended.
A scented rose dangling in abeyance.
Why not otherwise? Earth in abeyance.
A rose releasing its fragrant cure. I pull back
from wintry weather shrouding my thoughts.
Starting over, I enter a constellated Rouen,
holiday lights arched over streets, the Courts
a prelude to ornate churches, every window
candled, my spirit uplifted to a place where
I gather childhood roses and hold one upright,
emblazoned, as I look back on my perfect world.

**

Green Burial

By setting aside woods for natural burials, we preserve it from development . . . and put death in its rightful place, as part of the cycle of life.
—Dr. Billy Campbell, founder of Memorial Ecosystems, Westminster, South Carolina

Do not embalm me.
Leave me unclothed.
Vegetal soil will be
my dress, the resolute
night my swanky coat.
A simple coffin please:
pine, softened
and carved
by hearty rains.
Bury me in a natural
setting beneath
a hickory, maple,
or oak. No headstone
looming like a garret
or my name hollowed
in petrified stone.
No fumbling eulogy
to blemish the sanguine
air. No effusive tears
on my behalf.
Drape the woods
with a flute’s voice.
A mockingbird’s reply
will tunnel through
a tangle of vines.
Lay a colony of clover.
Plant saplings near
the mound. The ground
will teem with sweet-
showered cypress,
holly, and willow green.
In time out of loosened
loam, I’ll sprout
my fledgling limbs.
Grant me these tidal
sails. Let them billow
in emerald winds.

Prid Pergonia

The old hound crooned beneath the hollyhock.
It being noon and all, I lumbered
on home, hoping the sky would rock
this town so hard it’d be blear-eyed
for a month. That way Mary Hope Agnes
would stop her foolishness, the way she run
her fingers down the scruff of my neck. Bless
it, Mary Hope. Git them skeleton
claws off me! Homeliest girl in town,
she looked like she’d been hit
broadside by a bull about to drown
in the creek. Course, she’d spit
at anyone who told her so. I ain’t never
been a coward, so one day on a dare
put to me by Billy Joe Walker,
I says, Mary Hope, yore mama care
‘bout you so little she hit you
with an ugly stick? Landsake,
she came after me, mewing
like a cat down with the bellyache.
I outrun her. That don’t mean
she let me alone. Next day
I found one of them love notes, obscene
with upscale words and smelling like sachet.
I knew good and well I didn’t need
no girl at thirteen, especially not Mary Hope.
About this time Bird Dawg treed
her. She yelled so loud. God, the Pope,
all of Sandy Bottom heard her. Almost felt
sorry for her, except she kept screaming
and clawing, Prid Pergonia, you belt
that hound good, you hear? Kept carrying
on. I wanted to push her head in a mudhole.
Along come Preacher Bob Jack Dawes
sauntering in his Sunday best, poking holes
in the dirt with a stick and looking for a cause.
He says, Mary Hope, what you doin’ up thar
in that oak tree? Prid chased me, Preacher.
I could tell she was ready to air
out dirty linen, her face redder
than a July beet. Preacher Dawes looked hard
at me, at Bird Dawg, then back up
at Mary Hope, smiling sweet, the poultry yard
clucking with a dozen hens fed up
by all this dadburn commotion. Prid,
go on home. Now git! Preacher never was one
to mince words, so I hightailed it, figuring I’d be rid
of Mary Hope, figuring I’d won
and wouldn’t feel her clammy fingers pawing
my neck ever again. That was ten years ago.
Bird Dawg died, but Mary Hope’s still flaunting
airs. Don’t do no good to deal some women the death-blow.

**

Red Building in Forest

1.

Down a dirt road in a tangle
of pines, the windowless
building rises, awash in scarlet.
Humidity stains the brick façade
tacked over walls, blemished
by rain’s habitual lashing.
Along the forest floor, vines
feed on stems and trunks.
They climb the laddered stairs
as if to peel away the years,
as if to fling open the door.

2.

Newcomers long to know
what enchantment this
sanctuary held, who lived
or worked here, if lanterns
once cast a soft glow
onto crops stacked to the ceiling,
if a farmer’s dream vanished
in the ossuary of night
while fireflies braided
gold in the steamy glade.

3.

Sometimes it is enough to stand
alone in a secluded clearing,
to share with no one
the comforting calls of quails
and doves, lifting from the eaves
of a shelter. Until the loblollies
fall in a whip of wind, until kudzu
strangles the dirt path and the V-
shaped roof—this hidden place
will be the land’s fabled lure:
vigorous like earth’s blood-rich soil.

**

Caught Littering By the Law

Come on, son. Admit it. You’ve littered:
stryrofoam cup, tin can, maybe your little sister’s
disposable diaper that’ll still be decomposing
in muck after baby’s gone to dirt.
I’ll bet you’ve tossed fast food containers
from the Get & Zip onto Stampers Bay Road.
That plastic jug yours, flipped out of this Chevy pick-up,
racing this country road, 70 mph? You lazy
good-for-nothing smoker, flicking that butt
like you’re some King of the Road. I hear you:
There ain’t no toxic chemicals in them filters.
Well, now, you’re a real smart boy,
say around 17, 18? Cap on cockeyed, jeans frayed,
tennis shoes mud-caked, soles worn down to nothing.
Let me guess: headed for Gloucester to hang out?
Your mama know where you are, son? That you’ve taken
to littering? How about we come out here tomorrow,
and you clean up this stretch of road.
Look me square in the eye when I talk.
Tail tucked between your legs real good now, eh?
Well, maybe I’ll let you off this time.
Maybe you’ve learned a thing or two.
Land around here’s for farming, boy.
Dumpster’s for trash.

**

Snipped

Saffron, bouillabaisse, sea bass,
lilacs fragrance the house.
Just like that, I feel your spirit,
marvelous slipping off
your tongue, a fine Pinot Noir,
swished like tulle.
Those evenings when company came,
heaven forbid I’d lift the wrong
spoon for soup or drawl
ma’am with a vigorous smack,
improperly chew a crisp roll.
Today I pull the Limoges
china from the corner cupboard,
your Austrian crystal,
the polished silverware.
Fine. You’d repeat
fine, as I shared school stories—
and if I mentioned riding Peguin,
you’d ask if I needed anything:
boots, helmet, gloves, jodhpurs.
The boots still stand
in my closet, postured
by the hope of sloshing
through the creek, horse in tow.
Just like that, the scissors snap shut.
Buds float in bowls. In vases,
roses adorn another room
where you chew absentmindedly
on vanilla nut crêpes, strain to recall
names, your face upturned,
suspended as if drowning—
and you, perhaps aboard the QEII,
wander lost among the chairs
in the ship’s ballroom, expansive
as the void you’ve fallen into:
a tear snipped in the ocean’s crest.