(from the collection, In Deep Song’s Register), Terreson

all-who-are-wander-are-not-lostAll Who Wander Are not Lost, Romona Youngquist, 48 X 60, Oil


(from the collection, In Deep Song’s Register)

 

The red hourglass and the upturned spider belly,
black and gravid girl
poised in the palm of my hand.

Brother, I miss you in this bayou light.
You were always better than me.
I look for you now like a child
looking for stillness in his soul.

Roads to nowhere I keep to.
And to perfect love turning stone to water.
The gold shaft in you, in your bones,
clears the fields, stabs the levee,
sets you standing out heroic.

You never once questioned your passion.

It is the light that beguiles me,
tosses me down just when I think I can see.
Shadows in summer’s afternoon
I figure have meaning too, have the close story.
And they do, my brother, only
your purity of vision saved you.
Impurity in nuance damns me.

It is the heat of the hour
and the uncalled sighting of your face
that sucks the air out of my lungs.
This was not the plan we made
when we walked Chartres street and you said,
“My dance is my body, my God is my own.”

I swore by the beauty you saw that day!

It is this hour glass spider in my palm.
She rests deliberately, she is warm.
And you the casualty of too much Christ.

_____________
Terreson

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