Another poem

Here's another. This one is from a good 5 years ago... it blows my mind how quickly time rolls by.



At the Graveyard



I hated God.



She frowns saying it, words

sharp periods above us.

The ground does not split.

To the east a floating hawk,

blue paint, white canvas curls,

Renae.

Against the sky. In a camera's cross,

Her hair sleeks forward, cuts air,

Black, flapping thunderbolts.

I have no camera. I wouldn't dare,

We may as well be on our knees.

Like Chartre, the dusty ghosts

Scrape shins for hours, each endless

a closing loop, the cloister

Still out of reach. Renae drags up

The gravel slope, up, and into a blue

Yawn. Just this morning

I think of us, seventeen in the Sioux

Tri-State, home of War Eagle,

Tossing milkcaps into the Missouri.

Past purple clots of Iowa deep

in Louisiana, who knows, maybe

They found open water. Few escape

Iowa, the running joke. Renae's father

Found Nebraska with an arc-welder

And a thousand tons of methane.

His shadow spinning small over the river,

And each black bone covered

By Con Agra, Blue Cross.

The hawk sails into the sun.

Knees rough into the gravel,

Renae clambers down her slope,

A handful of daises, and a white cross

sprung from her father's arm.