Clara's Vision

(Appalachian Trail)

We drove for hours across terrain

I couldn't recognize; through

small towns that read: 

church, church, feed store, church.

We arrived near sunset,

when the light was gently capping

each ridge, cutting the edges

of rocks in red, pink, gray.

I didn't know what heaven was,

but perhaps this was it:

clouds sweeping gravel paths;

granite disappearing, then reappearing,

in the mist; small peaks poking out of

miniature white mountains within mountains.

The air was thin.  I thought I might faint.

You pointed along the serpentine path

and told me it went all the way

up to Canada. How far was that? 

How many lifetimes would it take

to traverse that distance?  Since I'd met you,

I'd only wondered, more and more,

how one can come to be saved,

I mean truly saved, not the

down-on-your-knees, begging

to be forgiven saved, but the kind

where we each come to know ourselves

-- radiance and repulsion aside --

just simply to know ourselves. 

I thought you'd found that

and I wanted it too.

As the sun set, the path began

to fade into an impenetrable darkness. 

You said we'd hike the whole trail

one day and I believed you. 

Then, back to the truck

for the long ride home. 

I didn't know then what heaven was,

but I wanted to believe you did.

Winter Vigil

Something, a dozen yards from the house,

waits in the snow.  Dusk settles early. 

To resuscitate the day we install floodlights,

print a permanent dawn across darkness. 

On the other side of the yard, at the edge of

this new brightness, it turns again, lopes off 

into a blackness at the edge of the light’s plain.

Something waits, still and deep and ancient.  

The rest of my family, asleep

in early winter beds, in dreams 

of spring, are engulfed in an orderly

procession away from this envelope of hunger, 

of cold.  I’m alone with it.  I can see its fur

glisten in the moonlight.  The line between 

outside and inside stretches impossibly thin.

In a few hours, the rest will wake. 

Daylight will drown out the darkness.

January’s monsters will melt like the snow 

through which we now swim. 

This one deep in fear.  This one crouching.

A Constellation

The room was full of stars.

Their light white, iridescent. 

The blue behind them, darker

than my darkest dream. 

He was there.  He wore

a shirt embroidered with stars. 

Against that night sky,

I could barely see him. 

I thought it better to stay,

discontent as I was. 

As I woke, he threw

the window open. 

The vacuum was broken.

All of the stars rushed out.

Sin Eater

I'd grown fat with it, like most do.

Every day the receptacle of all

that rage, anguish, that madness.

Not everyone is made for listening;

priests, perhaps, in the confessional;

psychologists and their couches;

those like me who feel we

must stay and take it in.

An ancient Welsh tradition

allows a family to hire a Sin Eater

when a loved one dies.

The Sin Eater comes and devours

the feast the family has placed

around the corpse.

With each morsel of food,

the Sin Eater takes into himself

the missteps of the dead;

when the table is cleared,

the dead one goes to heaven

and the Sin Eater goes mad,

filled as he is with

someone else's sorrows.

For months, I feasted at his table.

I'd lost all sense of hunger or satiety. 

My mouth remained open

and his miseries flew in

bite by bite by bite.

Even now I recognize the effect:

When I spot a table

laden with food,

I back away.