The Naked Mourner

Steaming in the cold
morning air, my breath
rises slowly, crystallized
molecules mixing with the twisted
plumes of chimney smoke
that drift softly above
the wasting branches.

“Let all men’s dying hearts
cease today.”

The cobbled path is slick
with frost, hushing
the emerald moss
that flows over plundered
limestone, brittle and dispirited-
sloping desperately towards a sea
of trampled brown grasses.

“Let them lay down and
become one with my brethren.”

Staked hard through the corpses
of sodden leaves
and the unforgiving soil,
a grieving skeleton
swings softly in the dawn light,
mourning silently for one last touch
of the waning autumn sun.

“Let their final breath escape lips
pressed gently to my sobbing breast.“

Above the Falls

Side by side, we walk together
in the early morning mist.
He has outgrown my hand,
striding evenly and clear-eyed
up the twisting mountain path.

Beneath his ball cap, red hair,
wild from a short night’s rest,
springs vine-like over ears burned
red by the Tennessee sun.

We walk in humbled silence,
upward past sweet birch and
mimosa, patiently awaiting
that first delicious cascade
of fleeing water.

One last bend along a narrow,
entombed artery, and we stand
on the rocky crown, softly embracing

the cavernous mosaic

of heaven and earth.

Breathing in the fragrance of rushing
water that dies proudly on the rocks
below, he reaches for me, smiling broadly
in the fingers of sunlight
that dance at our feet.

The Spark

She glides in the morning.
Her tiny toes never touching
the floor as she dances
through the house. School, chores,
even somber funerals, find her singing
sweet life that bursts from her
lighted lips in a mirthful cadence.

In the dying summer light of September
she has kissed the wilted grass,
waltzing gracefully through nine hymns
of her blazing, ascending birth.
Every creature, every mossy stone,
whispers their delight in the warmth
of her tender, grasping hands.

I preach, I bemoan, beware the bitter strangers
who have no soul- no sense of your frolicking
lightness. Yet she sees through the hard
flesh and scowling lips, delighting in the rapture
of touching their withered spirits. Humanity
is not damned. In her pulsing heart and shimmering
brown pools, everything has a spark.