To a shutter every movement is one
frame after a frame after a frame as
long as light lasts a mystery resting
between the captured moment to moment
changes and the true events every frame
is a movement too soon or too late
for the world which can only so long and
in so many lights make a smiling
face which rarely stands still to be taken
The geese cannot be pleased to see
more snowshod ground than when they left.
The season has been kind to them,
too kind, and they have shed their deep
down feathers of resentment and
thrown off despair to cry with the
impassioned convert, I am free —
I fly now for the promised land!
The television turns to shadowed moors
Where harmless made-up murders are performed
The warning from the weather service came:
tomorrow you will be confronted with
the unfamiliar memory of a year
ago, when just before Thanksgiving Day,
unseasonably early, fell such gifts
of snow that homebound busybodies feared
for their commute, and in the cold the trees
stood braced and shivering beside the road,
and frost flocked cedar limbs resplendent in
an alb and stole of quietness were leaned
long suffering above the low cold stones
of Brush Point. Following your tracks through drifts
of snow like fallen waves, you’ll crest the last
to see a plot prepared for burial,
dug down to dirt and clouded in a mist
of well intended words: forgiveness asked,
a benediction lingering to fall
to earth as gently as a parting kiss.
Prior conceptions
go up in a flash,
the gospel acted
out as long ago
when no one could read
and to be exposed
to the word of God
required something
overdramatic
for an offering,
embroidered robes or
feats of memory,
faith was sustained as
extinguishable
shivering candles
at night were maintained
for the dead by the
dying, when shadows
lengthened and children
struggled to attend
their eyes flickering
from ceiling to floor,
catching a sight of
the preacher’s hand raised
to stifle a yawn
And so I’m on my way to see my sister,
my sister who has cancer, a man says.
The driver nods. And I have cancer myself
you know, the brain, I shouldn’t be alive
today, except — He never gives us any
thing more than we can handle, yes, she knows —
But who decides when too much pain is enough?
I do my time, get out of jail and there
she is, about to die, he says. A quiet
persists too long. She nods. But here you are,
she says, a kindness none of us can manage.
To look another person in the eye
is difficult; to be ignored is brutal.