holding

moon,

there are

 things

one learns

not to say.

but holding

them

is ice

too long

cold

too long

trans-

fixed

it turns to

it turns to

turns to

nothing

but

an empty

hand

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.

future

moon,

in the sugar

 maple grove it is cold

 enough to thin

 blood.  And it’s now

I start thinking

 of old tap holes,

 those self-sealed stops

 where sap drops

 were the slow departures

of winter, drilled

and spiled

year after year

by a hand growing old

in the boiling glow.

That old grove, after 150 years,

finally yielded to a simple

winter, a simple cold,

 and was cut down

the old fashioned way,

sawn

 and planed and joined

  and glossed to this

tabled surface.  And on certain

Sundays it holds its own,

 this sweet sap,

cooked down

 years ago

   to liquid amber.

Maybe only you and I

can appreciate

the irony of it:

the clay cup

 of warm syrup 

once again breathing,

  poured out

  in a glint of March

 morning.

Knowing where the surface

of it began, the hand

that pushed the plane

 now pours the syrup.

And later, because

everything is dressed

on tables like these,

Easter feasts—quiet teas—

and, in the end, he,

lies flat against it all.

Moon, I want to see

  your night face

step out

of a shadow

as though we’d

planned it

the whole time

as though chance

were two held dice

never thrown

but rather dropped

ungambled,

the amber catching

in the fire you’ve been

cupping all this time

waiting

 in his, mine,

 naked wake

this fist, this cloth

this lavender

 wash

and pockets

 turned out,

sticky spiles

in a dish among

cones, among combs,

among all the things

he’d pocket

as he gathered

 February

and lugged it back

to a steaming shed

   coaxing a miracle

from the solice

of it.