No emoji can explain your face when the cathedral is burning.

 
 

When the Cathedral is Burning

When St. Raphael’s Cathedral burned, it was a homeless man
Camped among pews with his harmless prayers and fire
He couldn’t save the stone walls, but the glorious steeple
Laid for a decade in a parking lot to be re-imagined
 
Before it too was scrapped, and you wonder
How many days until the sun goes down, how many stones
In your own walls will crumble, or pop to dust
From a poor man’s judgement?

The walls of your house are in no rush to age
You have cleared a place to plant cherry or plum this morning
Shopping for a tree, you get the call, wander the parking lot for reception
The maple leaves have finally turned
 
The reddest leaves to be found--beaming--before she tells you
Saving one after another:  Captivated by color smothered in snow
You loved her; it was clear: Years of evolution ahead, dancing in streams
Sabbatical in Spain. The foothills of Kilimanjaro
 
Furniture is dumped to the dark wet street while green lights yield to yellow
And blinks of red. You will not be told everything, for she is kind
There will be no tree, you tell your friends. Searching for words
Yet no emoji can explain your face when the cathedral is burning

Over The Falls. In Memoriam

Over The Falls

              For Hallie Pope Jackson Vavrus. 1925-2021
 
Once upon a time,
A woman, her daughters and son
The telling of stories, reading aloud
And grace soaring from her lips                                 
 
Once upon a time, in Minneapolis,
A man named George Floyd
The burning buildings, disease
The final verdict
 
And yet, the woman said, “Thank you”
“We should always graciously accept
What we are offered,” she said
The children leaned in
 
Grandkids held hands soft and thin
As nothing they had ever known
No one left her bedside
Unchanged
 
Water from a sponge
Until even that seized
Still, on her lips, thank you
When water wet them
 
Not far from her bed, Minnehaha
She is called. Water waterfall in Anishinaabe
As a man named Longfellow didn’t get it right
But water is forgiving
 
Around thinning, skeletal limestone,
Nothing is concrete; nothing set in stone
Her waters pour abundantly down,
Beyond and gracious
 
Until she seizes up
Her pouring turns to shards
And people gather in awe
At a blue mass of memory
 
A woman named Hallie Vavrus
Has gone too, over the falls
Wetted, loved and grateful
Into the freeze, beyond

An urban cemetery, a mummified squirrel and serene deer near a street that riots.

 

Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery

 
I.
Two deer breathe calm inside gates of iron
Among the headstones, underneath trees
Of an urban cemetery, in Minneapolis
On Lake Street, where sirons, where the riots
 
II.
Nearby, a woman finds a squirrel clutching a branch
Teeth bared, mummified. From shovel to bag
Into another bag, into the alleyway trash
And barely aware, like the deer, we lay under trees
 
III.
We talk of cysts in the uterus
Women’s bodies, hysterectomies
Where to be buried, or buried at all
When the earth is full in the belly
 
IV.
We hear there’s an option to mix your ashes
With the free soil from the city compost
And you are planted with trees
In parks with children and lovers
 
V.
But who wouldn’t want a stone
Not cut and polished, nor your name in seriphs
But a rock thrown skyward in time by a trunk
Holding yourself over the Lake Street calm?
 
VI.
Caught in the woody clutch of an oak
To be forgotten within a generation by the internet
With a legacy hanging weighty over the souls
The deer, and bottles of Thunderbird