Southerly Frontispiece

When it’s quiet again
and breezes cover me like a hope,
it’s then I’ll breathe. The rain barrel’ll
overflow, as music through a wall
but only so. More like a skeleton of bass
notes, or bumpersticker leavings not quite
torn off the chrome. That’s how things
will move on. I’ll know the meaning
of seventy-two degrees, the drift of
bodies at rest, and the weight of
a solitary moan.

**

Upon Breaking Into The Open Summer Sky At Dusk

The American East,
more particularly the South,
doesn’t give an impression
of vastness
or great space
with its intimate green,
humid, low:
contrasting grassy dryness
perched out
or upon
the highland West.

But sometimes (though rarely)
I get a glimpse here
of big sky
above canopies or across a field.

One such view happened tonight,
around nine o’clock,
as dark woods in the foreground
shadowed to a grayness behind them,
afternoon only moments ago
and still afternoon prairieward.
Wow, the giant supercells,
webbed and quiet from the distance,
were losing steam from cool pine pubes below;
faraway the fireheads flashed
now and again,
soon to be defeated by evening. I could see
Big-Houses, quick slideshows in some heaven,
processions all strobing westward and away,
away.

From the car
it was soon gone from sight,
clinging by then
to radar only. Or to memory
once mythic wide,
now confined again
to a narrow
middle-of-nowhere road.

**

A Peculiar Authority

“For Christ’s sake, it didn’t take a great deal
of wisdom to know that. ” Robert Creeley

The mystery of faith
could be the name of a ship,
one that tosses without fear
or has a captain
with gills;

The mystery of faith
outwardly may speak
of stoicism or character
to a world that shrieks
at the slightest;

The mystery of faith
is often scoffed at
for being symptomatic
of simple minds and
the unwashed;

The mystery of faith
steadfast or stubborn
is a worldview born of night,
the unknown and
the inexplicable;

The mystery of faith
is sky blue, is a beacon
for the unworthy, something
to hold onto for pilgrims
like me.

**

Rooms

Spaces call for souls
who, when no one’s there,
echo-loop in all that quiet.
The sounds that empty places make
can scar the uninitiated
because we learn
our rooms outlive us.
That can tear me up. Resigned
to fact and endings, please tell me
that my furnishings
have purpose.