Ecclesiastes 1

1
When I was young I thought
that if I could have one wish it would be wisdom

wisdom like the great maple in the front yard
trunk seven feet thick, branches spread wide
with only a few that were dead, like the grey laurals
of a seer's head

2
wisdom stands at the gate
and she spread her fingers and raises her palm
wisdom would ride astride the city of men

her roots the earth accepts, the sky her budding bless
like my maple

3
visiting my parents for the weekend I walked to the maple
and leaned against the immoble stem, bark beetle black, with bare boughs
dead against a sky whose whispers no longer lingered
but whistled by. I put out my hand with fingers spread
to climb and pulled back at the touch
of the decaying wet skin, oozing pale white as if from the very heart.

4
wisdom lies at the gate of a ghost town
head shaven and limbs lost
begging the circling seasons for their alms.

Lunar eclipse from the window of room 2134, NICU

The earth around the sun
the moon around the earth
run their cycle course like
this unsuspecting pale child
and her red-eyed mother.

the doctor leaves as the astronomer
comes on the TV to explain the blood red
rays that filter through the atmosphere
to tinge the unsuspecting moon

and neither can explain this:
how there is no sorrow like seeing this pale light
succumb to darkness.

Pop Song

It was as if we wrote the pop song.
it felt wrong
to be so sure and unprofound
but the sound had my whole body shaking.

An old woman shivering and smoking in the morning snowfall.

You sit on the bus stop bench
smoking your cigarette
like a cliche, your lungs
hardened like old metaphor

the snow
falls like a blind hand on your face

falls like a cold question
from heaven:
who are you?

and the earth is sorry
that her children give the warmth of their motion
to the empty air

you will sit there
till all your ashes have fallen
like a dark halo around your feet

and I love you like
the coming sun does
with the warm arc of my thought
skimming off across this new blinding snow

but who loves you like the earth
she who takes your form and makes it grow?