rosary

moon,

pollen as pale as you,

as thin as you are now,

is a strip along the sill,

and I wonder

as I brush it

once more into the air

if it thinks it was long

settled.  I don’t dust

quite often enough.

And in small corner places

I bet it’s been years.

I should be ashamed,

I should,

and ask for a moment

of forgiveness, of penance. 

And I do I suppose—

I do—

but it’s not just dust

I’m moving from corner

to corner.  It’s paper

and old toys

my children have

written on or played with.

They’ve touched them!

How’s that

for sentimental?

That everything they

ever breathed on

could become a relic?

And it’s the rosary

that circled

 my mother’s urn

that hangs beside it all

on a strip of wall,

 and by its virtue

there’s been

 some sacred

claim to it,

a stake where,

while there

will be no profit,

there will at least

 be knowing.  Or if not that,

something like it.

The carnations are long

dried and settled.  I’ve saved

what I could,

what made it out

of her December wind.

And because photographing

a funeral is not

appropriate, I grope

 for what it all looked like:

a small stone

box, a long white

60 or more live bloom rosary—

pretty and

quiet

and clean.

And white.

  Someone spritzed it

before the service.

There were drops of water

on the word

Mother…

It looked, as it should,

alive.  As though someone

would pray it right there,

and have every intersession

they asked for

granted.

Maybe it is the possibility

of all that—of Mary

hearing our small service,

that made me carry it

all the way back here

and hang it

on the wall

where porch windows

sit angled out of their sills

by shifts in winter

where every season

comes and some of it

 always stays,

even when it’s pushed around

once in a great

great while,

by distraction

and displacement,

hands that hold and let go

without, or with a thought

about anything

that’s as anchoring

as a near decade

of pollen.