kneeling in a fiction I did not design
Hardwood under downy knees
what would come I could not say
soft dark of the bedroom
light under the door illuminating the wood-grain
I feigned myself into humility, a kind of child’s play
tried repentance on for size to see how it suited me
My mother sensed something under the god-talk
between man’s tongue & his language of liturgy
in the dark of a chapel by the sea she praised St. Mary
God is love, she told me God is what I want him to be
*
From a distance of years & miles, I walk the Woodlands Cemetery
greet the hot dirt of midsummer here where train tracks pass over marsh banks
so naturally, reeds part for them
From above, even the river pocked by crop circles,
channels of blue-brown in the marsh body like arteries
algae blooms over the surface: a sign of nutrient profusion
a fertilized decay that feeds the green, deprives the fish of oxygen they need to breathe
The way she struggled at the end, tubes running oxygen to lungs and chest—
Rest now, her doctor told her. Lia, you can rest.
*
Heavy air settles over the cemetery, thunderclouds build columns of steam
the sweet vanilla smell of some common shrub blooming
grasslands on the water small islands of trees
white clouds hang over the river’s deep green
In the midmorning of my life still, it feels unnatural
to be here to be here without her
