A Sunday Sacrilege
April 26, 2015
In my heart
resides a rage;
something
dreadful to contain.
I stand upon
a precipice
prepared to
burst and explode.
There is a
violence in my soul
that wants
to master and control,
to wreak
indignation on
someone I
don’t even know—
on someone
who, if I had passed
him in the
street would stay unknown.
I am a man
of peace who wages war;
who wants to
embrace the foe,
drawing near
to one afar
with fingers
interlocked around his throat.
Who is this
savage who stares at me
eyes
rimmed-red from a darkened glass?
Whose mouth
is this: a tight-lipped
line of
crimson slashed across
such a
terrible face? Lord
God have mercy on my soul.
Christ have mercy on my soul.
Lord have mercy—for I can’t.
Mourning Rain
April 27, 2015
Yesterday
morning I found a full-
feathered
mourning dove chick
and saved
her from my cats. She spent
the day
within my side-screened porch
protected from
fang and claw.
That evening
I returned her to
a high
branch in a tree.
But in the
night came a storm
and in the
morning she was gone;
no stray
feathers beneath the tree,
no Cheshire
grins from my cats.
Perhaps
she’s found in morning rain.
