Me, Of LIttle Faith

Winter has left its moldy breathe,
dark and moody under gray-yellow leaves
left over from last season’s dance
and our gowns are ragged and tagged
from slip and tip of wine gone flat
milky-eyed stones stare blindly,
branches reach towards warmth,
birds sing rocks and trees awake
oh, waken, we are drained of our color.

Little tulips, palms folded in hope,
pray for an end like children
without snow for sliding
or grass for rolling in;
a gray, sad, bedraggled pause.

Do I believe in happy ever afters;
after 2012, or death, or comets,
or floods, or wild winds
that we have been told will be our end?

Lord, look at this bone-garden, a black hip
amongst the rocks that hold it together,
like body of a woman who died in childbirth,
or during lovemaking, sprawled
and waiting for greener things,
a blanket, something to cover her want.

I have to wait and, lord, these seasons are long.

I’ve joined the “Baby Boomers Right To Choose”
and wonder if I would be tempted to upend myself
like lake ice does, perhaps sooner than the thaw meant me too.
I do not have faith, I have decided, in second comings.
My wrinkled-cloth skin seeks shadows rather than sun
and I see your face, if I stare open-eyed and then squint just right,
into space;  such visions only a lost woman can have
or a hollow reed who gave up the fight only to have her roots
hum themselves green and sprouting above sun-kissed sod.

Oh, come, age is not kind to me and I may not be the Christmas Carol
to be sung next time this rolls around.