S h a d o w l a n d

I come because elders shop at this hour,
picking collards for Sunday dinner. I say
the times are crazy. No crazier than
they’ve ever been. I think of Nerdrum’s Self-
Portrait with Melting Eyes, its mouth and
nostrils gaping—turning into something
from which there’s no turning back?

Since the world is still too much with us—
newsfeed reeling with remains, neither
tribute nor record, half-longing for what?
lamentations? though fatigue (keeping on
means never watching the news) is all you get—
I, too, would make myself, in gold notes
and shadow, not blind but unseeing.

♦

l o n g   f o r   h e a v e n   a n d   h o m e ?

sway of our porch swingswelter of autumnstrumming of crickets
remember how it was before?more command than questiondrifting
into your memory of usdown in your father’s fig orchardswigging
southern comfort after promwe sniggered at nothing in particular
nothing at allsniggered until we no longer could hearif your
father approacheduntil we didn’t care anymorehis hellfirea
small pricefor the fire in our chestsbut we never went to prom
we went to church insteadand yeti nodded anywaywanting to
ask do you remember?do you remember when we believed?when
we’d laze by the riverwhen i’d give myself in worshipbut i knew
you’d forgottenlike when we wandered off the roadhaze curling
from the dirtand crept into loblolly pinewe found an abandoned
chapelits fallen roof open to capricious skybermuda grass
overgrown between rickety pewsaltar overlaid with wood from the
roofwood like parchmentlike scrollsi laughedat how so
much that’s holyis left in ruinsbut you couldn’t find the humor
and yetyou nodded anywayfor togetherness is itself a separateness
like the way uniformity can look like loveand the tiniest dissentor
will for alterationcan feel like crueltythough the opposite is true
like nowas the provisional night kisses the purpled green of autumn
wildwoodmaking of themselves a wein which returning to i comes
with sacrificea disremembrance thatunlike the faith we can never
return tois not the sameas forgetting