As Mourning Doves Persist

for Robert Weldon Hunt What calculus is inherited from father. What algorithm foretells the snowstorm on the highway, driving? What poetry in music of folk songs to which his head swung to politic and freedom ride. Ongoing dedication in lessons a clean house, continuous on an interval. Derivative cloud, closed curve in a sandstorm. Periscope of his bright making. What straight stare and analytic eyes. White board revealing velocity of many daughters moving across the room, over the yellow dotted line. Sine. Perhaps it is the chain rule, half empty or half full. Reliable horizontal line sloping like popcorn hypotenuse gathered with needle onto thin thread to deck a season tree carried in two or more basic functions. Meeting to entreat ongoing introduction to the skills the first born learns from first born, with building blocks and abacus. Arithmetic engineering bridges even a house divided in tsunami lit with heaven’s gold star guiding through ...

We sleep in the master bedroom of a temporary rental .  I dream a car accident, backing up without a brake, can't find registration papers or insurance proof . A man with an accent calls to say if I don't return to the hotel, the room will no longer be ours. I crawl under the debilitated auto, spread paper in the shade where oil drips from two places, in front and behind me. You  are nowhere to be found.             In the morning upon waking, our old marriage tangle is rested and cast off. You softly tell me to sleep as long as I like, and later you hold me in the kitchen. Outside, red ants make neighborhood blocks of the slate porch, crossing grout tributaries. Two white and black magpies take to low flight then settle again on the fence.  Inside tamales simmer in green chile roux.

                                                                                  for Delaney And now you will assist the Raven, your daytime and night sky guide. There she is, do you hear her? your mother always asked, out strolling with you. Spot her high wire nest and eyes for you, secure   in coat of twigs and twine.  Forever more, your overhead soul surveillance.  You will find sustenance just pluck a practical feather to edit the dark and the sun drenched.   You who spotlights supple ballet ankles and disappearing glaciers. Right where you are, at the shore, born with assurance, little squirrel. String the smarting disappointments  and the pleasure bubbles like perfect baubles to make a sturdy necklace Know the...

In my belly a bowl of constriction,  of awakening to inevitable grief In my palm a rest for breath but what is it that brings anger to the market puts knives in our pockets when we cross paths, when death reminds us we are mortal and we scissor up instead of fall to our knees landscape of sharp rocks One's stances are prompted by old film  footage, or for another, softer song of river  naps and stars  to protect her from what is  incoming at night.  The edge of the seat of  unforgiveness is wearing  away. T he grain of the true old wood visible. No splinters but of little  support when holding so tightly  to inextinguishable righteousness. Out of place. Yet default.

I pick up this stick pin. Fifty cents worth of ink. Consider animals on my path. Whether there is luck - good or bad. The dead visit me or I stand at the highest lookout, searching for their ghosts. Rippling Monarch butterfly reminiscent of mother, gone. Or patient hawk, like devilish departed step father on a tall roadside lamp post. Seeking meat and broken eggs below. We are carnivore though we don’t eat our young. Together, as children we learned of a heavenly place, were directed to picture the old dead greeting the newly dead. At night, my mind cannot cast out its doubts. Weighted foot blanket, grief. I conjure necessary recipes like dog-eared leaves of the Bible passed into granddaughters’ hands. Photographs mistaken for memories... ...Neither epiphany nor revelation. Only the faith to keep us in the circle. Dizzy and in concert with ground and sky and the envelope  between.

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...