Right about now I remember my Mother,
she must have said:
"There is no self-righteous God in his kingdom heaven and hell is
a sure-fire declaration of the absurdity that is perpetual life,
right here
in its living." at least a thousand times before
she went through the corridor of
never more, (I still see crows and swallows,
circle dancing in the sky
butterflies land on my shoulder and the scent
of lilacs and roses permeate winter's white
when I think of her.)

I don't know why families come apart
and bags
are loaded with every shade of hurtful
bile, carried like forgone conclusions
(even Atlas would shudder at its sight)
encapsulated and magnified and marked with the
straight arrows of time
until it's hard as rock and the heart
freezes in its own shadow

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition"
but it comes in regular intervals, stocks of self-esteem
plummet and life goes haywire on a dime, greed returns
well-fed wildly gesticulating with boney fingers
somewhere between a dance in limbo and
a wedding day, when the bride wears white
and nearly everyone gets drunk for the occasion,
but family ties are broken months before

it would seem nature has a better plan:
one that won't come between anything for the
sting of a butterfly is a thought that can not be true
and old-fashioned love is a sticky spider web;
poems written in the August heat are cautionary tales,
there's enough love to fill an empty sack a hundred times over
when the heart is as light as an angel's feather in a box of chocolates,
and you get the one you wanted with the first bite.

When the white rose amoung a dozen red ones is noticed, it doesn't matter
if it has thorns, its beauty is not compromised.

That's the one I keep closest to my heart. It grows into a forest of ice.

And
the ice tinkles in a glass.

L'chaim.