A. Garnett Weiss

Beholder

He enters the library to a duet of caged finches
Thirty kids wait with stories to tell
“Let’s hear you”

The door creaks, admits the thirty-first child
Fine, moon pale hair frames her face
a patchwork of crusted sores
Her presence shrinks the room
She raises a rough, red hand

Fearful she’ll sound broken
like the cells of her skin
he gathers his platitudes
makes ready to soothe

“I’m Alice,” her voice clear, strong
“I like to write about ballet, music
and horses – oh, the way they run!”

As she speaks
her eyes laugh

Inside Alice is a garden
A field of flowers
A concerto
A stallion racing against the sun
to some finish line
A beauty in long flowing taffeta
poised to swirl in a mirrored ballroom

He holds his breath

“Once upon a time…”

Meditations on Love

I

He tore the bloom
from her rose

Soft scarlet petals
and thorns

II

Green layers ice the shore
Mist above open water
No horizon

A swan’s channel for its mate
White breast
icebreaking

Between her bowed shoulders
his hand, warm, sure
Urging her return

III

He’s fallen through the ice
of year-long lies

She will not hear him
drown

November 13

Nothing prepared her
for the blue light of mourning,
warm shoulders, cold hands.

The April Dead

Layers of earth and air separate us from her now
when dogwoods shadow grasses with the grace of haiku.

We came to the city, her city, on wings of lead
from northern sleet into ripening spring,
like pilgrims, who seek a grail they fear.

The day was glorious.
Sun declaring, “I, too, honour her.
Will shine her way into my universe –
a place too small for living women.”

One bee, then another hummed over the dead.
A third poked into white clouds of valley lilies
an ancient mother held to catch her tears.
They, too, lived this spring.

With fistfuls of cool, rich soil
we closed the ground above her.
We left her there, as cardinals sang a requiem
among apple blossoms.

The next morning, the sun lost all its strength.
It rained and rained and rained.

We left the city, her city, knowing
distance brings no relief
as we grind into May.

*DNR

A small woman in the corridor
Her steps like an infant’s –
sometimes hesitant, sometimes head-long

With each one, she draws another breath
Her mouth open, forming a question

She bumps into a steel railing, recoils
Then hurls herself across an open door

She takes a long, long inhalation

and forgets
how to exhale

*DNR: Do Not Resuscitate

Maestro

On a walk, his old man gait andante on asphalt
he hears a siren down the block
A mother calling “Davie, come in”
The cathedral’s twelve bell proclamation
Wind riffling pastel leaves of early May
He listens to his own, slow rhythms
Each heartbeat, each breath inhaled, exhaled

Words of an ancient poem come
How Jove and Mercury blessed long-lived lovers
for their humanity in a dark age
Turned their hovel into a temple above a flooded valley
Granted their wish not to see each other die
Their limbs becoming branches
An oak, a poplar – intertwined for eternity

The story stays with him
Words roll away like thunder after a storm
In their place, a single note, then a phrase

He turns the corner
At his front door, the phrase heralds a motif
The key in the lock

a new symphony