Druid pacing of the ghosted halls,
The choir-boys go in their naked shawls,
Throwing rosemary down the rabbit holes.
“Let one be all,” Greta says behind the prayer pew,
The Priest—dipping dirty fingers in etherized water bowls,
Drip, drip, drip, deep down into their streaming souls,
Like the hot tin roof of an old speakeasy coo.
I knew it well; once.
And the mourners reach out;
And idle, like branches in winter
But Sweet Spring was once;
And the streams stocked Carolina carp, and rainbow trout.
We used to sit tongue-tied in the steepled church.
And in the fields, under the moon,
Played as pagans worshipping the branching birch
And pretended we were saints.
She came only Sunday
After mourning God, and his accomplices; someway
She stumbled into the moonlight, and wept
Pulling a floral skirt over her knees
In a little light, dressing us as we crept
Behind the city and the phosphorescent swept
Like ghosting sirens off the Mediterranean seas,
She was all laughter and pointed elbows until she concedes
On the Mondays, I waited to serenade her;
Working an old projection reel, looping, and looping
Sometimes I watched;
A screen flickering and Oh! God, have mercy on the mariner
Lonely nights in the bitter streets
Outside the colonnade were
The wicker candles where the foggy edges of windows meets
Love called to prayer
Waiting on the Strawberry hills
Behind the city and its dirty alleys and grimy window-sills
Picking grass between finger and toe
Like a fern foraging deer waiting to be entrapped;
And I waited all night, singing of Michelangelo
And on Sunday, one week she didn’t come forth so;
And I thought, for a moment, that the world had collapsed
And for once, I walked home alone,
And winter came once and for all,
Skipping forth like a stone
Ignoring me; and jumping forever onward
