Come Autumn

The season turned this past week, chilly mornings consuming summer's heat. I've followed my migratory path homeward from Harrisonburg to the familiar oaks and the winding Patapsco river.

I miss mornings walking to work in Chinatown, not so much approaching that corner where the sharp acidity of urine would swell into my nostrils, but the call and response of "Goodmorning" and "Buenas Dias" or Mama Lupita saying in Spanish, "Where is our boyfriend? Only you and me.We'll fight the other woman." Or Ellie and her dancing as she sang out, "cha-cha-cha." I miss the unpredictability of those days. Papa T. playing blue grass on his harmonica and telling me of his dreams to someday return to Tennessee or Kentucky.

I haven't written poetry for a long time, but visiting Emily and Thia is always a good excuse to-- we filled our glass bottle mugs with spicy mocha concoctions and headed up the hill to draw out words. Two coffee stained pages later I discovered my insides are coated with anger, guilt, longing, helplessness, and love. I've been re-reading Louise Glück's Matins and this is a rough response:

If you care so much then, God

you will have to speak up.

She passed the year in that

classroom never correcting

her mispronounced name

wondering if she fully existed,

while they said it does not matter

if he assaulted women, he is

a brilliant theologian. 

He dressed his biases in the 

blood of Christ once and 

ordered a friend to be engulfed

in flames: laughter and bone 

licked clean, carbon & black silt,

and did he weep on the cool stones

or did he praise You?

If you are so merciful, let us forget You.

What I know is I am not ashamed,

we embraced once,
later we only shook.

Speak up then, if it is not Your name.