Flowers and votives attract the souls of the departed;
and bowls of food, glasses of their favorite drink.
Flying creatures draw near—wings like stained
and soldered glass; feelers that curl and uncurl.
Across thousands of nights they've hovered,
spellbound by light, trying to sort blue from silver,
broken glass from the startling sheen on bellies
of fish. You no longer want to believe in endings—
Years after a fire razed a building to the ground,
you find a creased photograph in a sheet of plastic,
the shape of a foot still molded to a tattered
curve of leather. Fault lines run through everything:
what you are, what you become; what
remains after you've stopped trembling.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
