Poetry – Page 15 – Psaltery & Lyre

Beehive State

Smoke drifts westward like saints seeking / Zion, a rose in the desert. / / This faith is a dark handcart / to pull.

Something spoke, and something / / inside me answered, / and I understood none of it

your only prayer / / is the hour singing and hanging at your neck, / until the singing and hanging / become a starless treelight dress you wear

Church is only open on Sunday.

My mother owned a cauldron so rusted, nothing could live in it. / / Sometimes, I swore, I could feel the sharp tips of the orange crescent moon.

Who among you will dispute? / close affinity between Ruminants and Pachyderms

When I lament the bag trapped somewhere / in the bowels of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 / / The agent asks is any of it irreplaceable?

When the thunder / cracked above / and God poured water / upon the earth

It’s the young French father’s longer arms / that first reach their daughter’s hair / in which her clasp is tangled.