Elements: Copper

See how the steeples oxidize
To verdigris. Transformed like the holy spirit.
Badge of the essential: The Copper Age.
Conductor of the electric notion
That lights the world.
In Chile, men labor in open pits,
Their hands stained with the dried blood
Of an ore that can be molded
Into the simple penny
That purchases the lollipop
To quell a child’s tears.
A woman wears a copper bracelet
To cure the ache in her heart.
She believes in it as the priest believes
In the host he lifts beneath
A copper dome. Walking a beat
A copper can choose one of many theories
Of the etymology of the word.

Above The Treeline

This is the distance of peril.The lost cause
Of hidden canyons where rivers jitterbug
Over the stones. Cohabit
With coyotes or pronghorns.
Hike the merciless trail
Where the blind mules tread
Surefooted as monks circling
A prayer wheel. Hide out
With the outlaws of love. You must
Climb these slopes above the treeline
Where the little yellow flowers explode,
Where the snow pockets unfold in glitter
And the bottomless lakes are cold.

Lilacs in Rain

Lilacs refreshed by rain
Absolve the grey morning.

The pain in her shattered knee.
The swollen veins in his neck, a warning

Of the many ways a heart can fail.
A drizzle or an all day downpour.

Perpetual drips of worry stain the window.
A gall on knapweed in which an alien

Thought is coiled. A word like yearning
Overstates what she feels

Adds a specious polish
To the hazy occuluded air.

The lilacs bow their clusters
Heavy with scent.

Madonnas of cognition,
Of sad hymns, of elegies.

Whitman knew how lilacs mourn
In Lenten robes. How a woman

Hopeful of comfort planted them
A hundred years ago.

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