By Jo Anzalone
Waiting...
clean and new...
bright in the morning sun,
A thing so out of place
in all its very spotlessness
As to catch the eye...
startling
both the sight
and the watching heart.
Intentions evident
as container
for the man
Standing tired
and broken
from a night of pain,
from memories of loss,
And an aloneness
so alone
as to crease the land,
sucking dust
into some cavern far below.
It waits...
in bare serenity,
dispassionate,
to receive him dead
That it, then, might lay to rest
as mounds of dirt
fall in soft thumps
upon its fresh-planed board.
But...
the very livingness
of the man
beneath the layers of dust,
the layers of rust-red blood,
and layers of raw-nerved pain...
The livingness of him
radiates into the desert air
the truth of who he is,
and all his inner striving,
all that he has loved
and yet can love...
The soft curve
of sun-warmed flesh,
hair ruffling in a touch of air,
a small chain lying
on a breathing chest...
All these
belie the new-nailed board
that would receive the shell of him
when all he is has flown,
replaced by solid lifelessness.
And, so, he turns his back to it...
knowing in the core of all he is,
and all he's called to be,
must be...
Knowing that his livingness
is not yet done,
his path unwalked,
his hills not climbed,
his love not yet received...
His mind scans outward,
searching, probing
for the ways leading not to quiet board
but to some...other...
unknown journey in the now
Where pain can settle softly,
melting in the velvet fibers
of memory healed by love,
And loss can find refilling
in vital, deep-welled waters
poured freely from the hands
of one with such to give.
And even dust and even blood
are washed and disappear in tears
longing to be shared
by someone waiting
at some quiet bend.
In him this morn
life reaffirms its livingness
as the cup of it
fills fully to its brim
And death must keep its distance
looking elsewhere for its prey...
for he is too alive
to fit within a space
pine-scented in the blazing heat.
***
(Cort brings out the free verse in me, I fear! And I needed to write
something in a different vein today from Aubrey's Parallel Attack
just to remind myself I could.)