Anniversary Song
for Richard, on our 30th

It’s evening in the garden now
and shadows are starting to fall
on the pink coneflowers
and Russian sage, whose blue
green wands wave
in the hot wind, this late
July twilight.  Fireflies rise, spiral
up from the lawn, like the tiny
light from the pointer our guide
at Font-de-Gaume used to show us
that the walls of the dark cave were alive
with bison, reindeer, horses,
the contours and bumps of the rocks
part of the painting, casting a third
dimension, the flicker of her flashlight
mimicking torches made of rush,
and suddenly a whole herd
gallops across the plains.  And then,
in the last room, she traces a deer,
the parabola of his antlers arcing
above, his mate kneeling before him.
His mouth parts, his tongue reaches
down to lick her face, and across
30,000 years, your hand in mine,
we feel the stroke of tenderness
in the dark.

-from More (C&R Press, 2010)

We have climbed these two hundred sixteen steps,
not on our knees as medieval penitents, 
but on our modern feet, yours with the high 
and aching arches, mine with their bunions 
and hammer toes, a cobbler’s nightmare,
trudging up the stairs and cobblestoned
paths.  In the 12th century chapel, she waits,

the Black Madonna, where she has brooded
over centuries of pilgrims, cockle
shells pinned to their breasts,
the coracles of their hopes
setting sail.  She is serene, shining
in her ebony wood, a dark star.
She holds her small son, reigns
over the history of loss. 

I pray for my damaged son, rocking
as if tossed on stormy seas and chanting
“Goats, goats, goats. They always
make me laugh.”  What can we do
with so much tenderness?

Keep walking, one foot
in front of the other, on this stony
road.  Blink in the sun
that nearly blinds us
as we stumble out of the chapel.
Below the parapets, hawks soar on thermals,
their bright wings keeping them aloft
on waves of air, imperceptible
as faith or light.


-from More (C&R Press, 2010)