Month: July 2011

“Milagros are religious folk charms traditionally used for healing purposes and as votive offerings in Mexico, the southern United States, other areas of Latin America, as well as parts of the Iberian peninsula. …[T]hey can be constructed from gold, silver, tin, lead, wood, bone, or wax. In Spanish, the word milagro literally means miracle or surprise.”

Dear red striated muscle, vascular and
slightly bigger than my two cupped hands,

I saw your image stitched and stuffed as a well-
worn pincushion with the legend “There

is a place in my heart for you”. I cringe
at the thought of needles; and also because

I know that every eye, finger, bone, or body
part left by the wayside altar means something

has been sacrificed, given at cost for another’s
due. Crow feasting on that bit of severed

flesh, do you stop your fevered work to notice
the day is overcast and cool, doused with

the creosote smell of rain? It doesn’t fall,
only makes threats that cast a pall on our

determined plans. And your rejoinder comes alongside
calls exchanged by ravens: how mystery is never led

nor haltered, but even the bird clothed head to claw
in ashes, flashes a tin orb: a jewel in its drusy eye.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Overcast sky, the rain that falls
elsewhere. The canopy of electric sound
cicadas weave throughout the trees.

You have me scour the pockets
of such moments for some remnant
change— and here I lay them down

and balance them on a rim of glass.
A silver-spotted skipper drinks
from the bergamot and I want

to tip my face toward the flower’s
starburst cup. So long at work,
and teetering from one impossible

task to another. I count and recount
an abacus of spilled grain, water flowing
from a sieve: o gather me now in.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Dear constant chafing
under heel and ball
of foot, teach me patience

for the long, slow simmer
under water, in the wild;
teach me the inward-

turning gift of each
lunar hollow, smaller
than the eye could reckon.

Within the pebbled garden
where monks rake labyrinth
upon labyrinth, juniper

and pine open in the wind
to praise. Shingle and shale
upon the beach: buffed

by seafoam and crowned
by the gods’ careless spit,
you’ve promised

like a lover to mold
me smooth, to lilt me
quick across the water

to the other side.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Question-mark Butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis)

The underside of every moment is a shimmer you
might hear, but not see: curved and silvering
as an echo of bells at sundown, mottled

or muffled from mallet-blows. When the last
of the herd is driven into the barn, the man
latches the gate and washes up at the pump.

Shadows streak the linen on the supper table.
Shadows soften the winged bodies in love
with the dangerous heat from the lamp: listen,

they frame most of the questions at this hour.
In the corner of the room, a woman dozes off
in an armchair. The knitting has slipped

from her hands. The child by the window
has brushed her long, black hair and gazes
at a wilderness of stars in the dark.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

“…and at the iron’s point
there seemed to be a little fire.”
~ St. Theresa of Avila

Sunflower bowing to the east,
tethered to the blazing sun—

Sparse carpet of moss with hidden
tongues desiring volumes of water—

Tell me again the story of the saint,
her every shudder pressed in sensuous

folds of marble; and of the angel standing
above her with his spear of gold—

Red brick dust, planks of weathered
wood crumbling in the courtyard—

No golden dome here but relentless sky
under which everything’s stripped of rapture—

Pots of baked earth, each marked
sin cere, distinct, unalloyed—

I run my hands over the rough, dry clay,
loving best those surfaces whose cracked

veins might lead divining rods to all
the parched suburbs of the heart.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.