As Mourning Doves Persist

The body worker lifts  one word  from each visitor  as she finishes.  Erasure  or clue. Fatigue sawn off. Placed in a pot in a warm window just outside  the narrow  room.  Personalities  linger there:  belly dancer,  concrete breaker,  elementary  school teacher. diamond,  chisel,  pencil. honoring all who falter, Easter weekend, 2018

S acred stones roll around on the floor of my car, carried in over years of scavenging. Pocketed. Parceled. Placed on dashboard or grave.  Markers of present coloring past. The sun bathes the windshield just so and the secret messages written in mud or snow show themselves for the innocent blessing that they are. I walk into this side street café with my bruised heart in a purple and black satchel and am greeted by a circle of banjo players and one free seat against the window. Chairs like we inhabited in elementary school when things were still made of wood, grafted together at the corners with metal, corners rounded and smooth. We kept our notes in desks and lockers, wrote whispers of names we adored on the plain brown wrappers around our math books. Took broken bits and mending tape, carted cassette songs of guitar players who have since died or changed their names. Like mantras, directions to the river canyon where we could picture the rough rope as magical swi...