empathy in A minor

Yet another bit of blank verse for those keeping score.

We Wait With Her

In her hunch at the piano, we see

The weight of her existence. Fingers drape

The keys lightly, no pressure, no song.

We cannot see her face, and yet we know

The tear-veneered eyes, terse lips, and pale

Cheeks. From the slope of her shoulders, we guess

The invisible days gone by are stacked

To the brink of her atmosphere and pray

Soon they will topple, hurtle sun-ward,

Catch-fire and vanish in coronal flares.

We cannot plumb her thoughts, and yet we know

She’s ready—poised to start gently with a mere

Pulse of fingertips, then crescendo—slow,

Unveiling layers of ferocity

With every measure, deliberate rise

Upon rise. For now, no pressure, no song.

In the depths of her breaths, we learn

The pull of her descent into sorrow;

We wait with her, our own tears gathering.

our annual dread

Here's another poem submitted here for the sake of timeliness and not for the fact of its doneness. You see, I would rather come off as aware than I would as prepared.

Alabama Heat

It comes early and leaves late.

Each year we forget, stunned

By the oppression of the sun.

As Noah’s flood—from the sky,

from the ground, all at once—

The inundation of fire.

And yet somehow we forget the rivering sweat, the wavering asphalt, the lolling

Tongues of dogs.

It’s the burden we bear

To our swimming pools,

The yoke of our wet towels

Coming home; we slap mosquitoes, cussing

A storm, shaming grave-drowned mothers.

Fireflies elude the children,

High into the maple,

Down into the ditch.

Down where the black-bags

Of dry-bone leaves loiter, forsaken

By the city-trucks. Summer, summer, summer . . .

Fanning ourselves with yard-sale fliers,

We hum our praises

As we tend to do in the face

Of our oppressions, of our God himself—

His spirit descending like the gloaming-bats

To intercept the mosquitoes

And, our annual dread,

To alight in glory on our heads.