Vespers
When Brian does the homily
I feel like I’ve just split
the atom, a tiny thing,
and I must hide it from the parish,
so great is my love.
Most things I pretend
never happened. I did not fail
to attach a canoe to the car rack.
The cousin with measles
wasn’t mine. In August
I was not the blueberry monster
and also I never met you
by the baggage carousel,
two watering cans in your arms.
There are the growing
and the dying and then
there are your ribbons. As far
as thoughts go, this one is clean.
These geese. All of these
wild geese are beeping.
There’s a lack of new reeds
in the lake. The water park
employees have a rich and scary
night life and I want to be let in.
I want to be a local termite and work
for years to wreck the floor.
I do not even know why.
But there is all this fun in method,
pulling blade after blade
from the lawn. No matter
how much I keep breathing,
I cannot see the stars.
It is one of those hopeless cases
from which doctors turn away.
Next Sunday it is your turn
to provide us with refreshments.
Please also grab my hand
and take my pulse. Don’t be afraid.
We can say it never happened.
Can claim we were distracted
by the acolyte’s green dress.
She will be like a radiant salad.
She will stand on the last plank of youth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Fledgling Crocus
Soon when I look out the window
there will be light, nothing but.
In Hanover they’ve detected a weakness.
Thanks a lot, Hanover. This house
is 55 degrees Fahrenheit and frankly
growing colder. Maybe you have
noticed how the saucers of milk
are considering icicles, I think
for the very first time. Who can
resist the call of the inchworm?
Do not even try. Get down
on the floor and get as lucky
as you’d like. Today is the
Holiday of Ill-Begotten Goods.
I stole my pen I stole my land tract.
I am living on someone else’s principles.
Hanover, we have greatness
in abundance, we have shivers,
we have fleas. Nest after nest
is abandoned and months from now
when bombed-out children decide
to talk they will each start by reciting
“My mother’s gorgeous hair...”
It is all there. In the short books
of the future. What is here, in this
room, is a small lamp and a vase
that needs changing. Is cubic
space interfered with by hi,
my human form. And there are
other rooms with other forms,
there is a future not prone
to contain me. I am the hundred
and third last telegram. I am sent
with a small degree of urgency stop
please retrieve me from the historic
Empress Hotel. Hanover, let’s say
that reading is like grave-rubbing
and the charcoal is your eyes.
Let’s say all the things to each other
as if we were two friends chatting
while waiting for the bus. And night
arrives but the bus does not, and a frost
comes on with a mind to disrupt
the fledgling crocus. What can
we spooks do but say thank you—
for our coins and for our progress,
for the kind genetic mutation
that dressed us all those years ago
in warm yet lightweight fur.
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Heather Christle has poems here, here, here & here among other places.