reflection: spare crop / fleet mind
Who would have thought we humans
…..would have lasted
this long. Our tenacious, mineral selves
leaving
…..tell-tale dust
everywhere.
I am thinking of you everyday as
I make sawdust in the basement
sanding shelves for my husband
who makes granite dust in the quarry
both particulate clouds rise and
…..occlude the light.
*
Bonnie McClellan
There is coffee to be washed
from the bottom of cups,
Floors to be washed,
laundry to be done,
essays and invoices to be written.
The sky is still dark.
Morning’s coffee with sugar and whole milk;
I am fattening on your absence.
*
The glassmen run reconnaissance
like fluorescent-vested spiders
through the web of night streets;
lacing the village tightly
from downhill church to up.
Dawn crashing they come
green reflections
of wined evenings upended
echoing through the fog.
Nude summer feet
on sheepish boulders falling,
……….through peasant ices’ glacial tread
floe following light, tripping
roll, down running fleet
……….biting toes with
………………..ever-glancing snows
………………………..green-moistened lisp.
We awake to the muffled chaff of rain
as the grey down of clouds roundly tussle
for the pleasure of concealing dawn.
mineral time crushed into
kitchen counter
grey slab of bardiglio
shard/scarto/scarred
the knife-blade print
the oil stain
the lemon that left
a star-shaped etching
compressed calcium
soft grey
just cooler
than a dove’s back
MON REALE / MASON’S EUCHERIST
Tourists take photos while the faithful take communion.
The priest extends God
again and again.
within the cardboard flavoured
benediction of holy bread
He Is
reconstituted by faiths’ sanguine tongue.
The exchange of force:
the weighted wheel that rights itself
the pendelum
the cam shaft
the finger on the shutter button:
charged reflex of the aperture flash-writes the icons’ golden tesserae
to memory
again and again.
Monday, in the winding weekday of a suburban street:
The bread man drives a panel truck
newgreen once, now filmed with summer dust cast up from the road
innocent as the first stones that years ago
smacked off enamel chips and so
engendered oxides’ ruddy rose.
Chanting through the nasal static of a loud speaker
unintelligible words.
His rough square hands convey
in paper, through which butter has begun to soak,
delicate pastry filled with almond paste and dark chocolate
lightly dusted with powdered sugar, and then:
two swallows of thick, black coffee,
in a plastic dixie cup.
The 10 a.m. taste of salvation
again delivered to working men.
.
.
.
.
light-bearing months; burnt out, used up, exhausted, passed by
heavy grey clouds twisting, cajoling, traveling along the route of back-lit, illuminated, golden-edged time
passed, exhausted, used up, burnt out; visual border between heaven and earth compensated, forfeit.
.
.
.
.
inter: put into the earth
prestation: the obligation to perform or not perform a duty
.
.
.
luminous season, spent
grey omnibus’ ply limned time
spent, horizons paid.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Venerdi Santo,
Cristo morirà ancora
come ha fatto ogni anno
poichè Dio sa quando.*
—-
They held a New Orleans Funeral for Jesus:
Woodwinds, brass and the big bass drum.
After awhile the rain began to come;
Parishioners popped up their umbrellas,
Madonna was sacked to protect the stars
Spangling perfect electrified hair that
Should have been disheveled in grief.
Christ: unable to awaken, trapped in an opiate nightmare,
Pallid, couch-ridden, sick with flowers,
Widow-borne through the streets on a lacy bier.
Mary: politely dolorosa, her face more composed than that
Of the old mother dressed in black
Hanging out of the window to watch Her pass,
Baptizing the parading crowd with tears
Thrown out like old wash water.
What is left clean and what is soiled?
The sorrow of sin shifts from house to street
To be tracked back in on the slack-shod feet
Of grandchildren, dogs and beggared questions,
Salved in the last moment with words and oil:
quidquid deliquisti / in all that you have failed.
***********************************
*Good Friday,
Christ will die again
As he’s done every year
Since God knows when.
Bonnie McClellan-Broussard 