They pull their shawls against the chill
The firelight warms their faces.
In the near-distance, coyotes
Howl around their prey,
Yipping dinner,
And overhead, beyond
The crackle and the pop of fire,
Stars twinkle.
There is mother, and
The really old grandmother sits
Her sharp eyes seeing
Clusters of the Milky Way
Moving through the Cosmos
Infinitesimal silvered dusts,
Each mote a first breath, each a last
The sister sits with quiet,
And there are others, they too
Appear contemplative, staring into
The ritual and comfort of the golden,
In this case, fire, the golden fire
But often golden sunset
Preceded by those holy
Pinks from the early
Morning
East
Digressing back,
Some of them, the women,
Seem little more
Than miasma,
Though all reach for grail forgotten
As the world veered
Out of tilts,
The lessons of the grandmothers
Ignored, discarded beyond memory;
The price of negligence so dear,
The reckoning assured,
They know they’ll be the ones
To settle up
On judgment day
They sit around the fire pit
Where the grass won’t grow
In between the gardens around
The barns and the rimming green
That surrounds the weeping formal,
A garden of tears,
Their own tears
Salting that patch of ground
Where life no longer thrives
At least for now
They know that love is not enough
Sometimes giving way,
Bending in an agony
That only time and will can soothe,
And no guarantees at that
Maybe all they seek
Is the logic of the mystery,
Answers sparking as they’re calling to
Ghosts of just what might have been,
What was, or to the whys that linger,
Pointing deep to the no matters that
Don’t matter anymore
And therein, truth indwelling
The alpha and omega
Some things will never change, even
As they ever grow and flicker
Embers for the coming flames.
