Egg Hunt

Awake,
a grave refuses
permanence.

Wide eyed lily
witness,
scent
to a blind world.

Mothers tell us,
"Wipe the sleep from your eyes."
O, it's been wiped, mother,
it's been wiped.

Now the blood spilled
is the blood pumped
deep as a welling up
of forgiveness.

Spared despair, we crack eggs
in a bowl and wait,
as our not-a-ghost Guest takes
another minute
to wash the family's feet.

Good Enough

Hammer a nail
into your hand
at the table.

Bend a rose stem again
and again
around your head.

Taste a thirst for justice
racked
on vinegar and rot gut.

A Friday good enough
to crack our grave opinion,
blackens at noon.

"This is My Body
broken for you" without
breaking a promise or a bone.

From the hanging tree,
the never dead again Son said
"This is your mother," to every boy born.

and "This is your son,"
to every lady in waiting
on the Lamp at her feet.

Hammer time played on a clay
pot; mud, spit in our eye,
see our way clear.

Blood pulsed into a chalice
from a torn skin
good

to the last drop,
this Friday
we thank God.

Host Card

The Jesus of my Catholic youth

bid me come 

as a little child.

The finger pointing Sacred Heart

like a passing billboard

"You're Name Could Be Here."

I read brilliant smoking atheists

and wonder whose name they'll cough

up final in blood spit.

I read monks, who never knew stamps,

writing letters

of eternal consequence, by candle and quill.

I stick my knuckles out

for the nuns to rap, but only the Lord answers,

perfecting the Harlem shake.

Charity all

after cure and care

are settled alike.

Gaggle

Baying geese beat alarm clock
to spring ahead Monday.

Grey sleeves, sky and scarves,
the warmest ground turned by moles,
coffee bitter.

Found pennies say trust,
the lost hour of sleep jams a foot
in the office door.

Service, with a mile of beach
in the rear view mirror.

Always thus, this, or that
jumbling like laundry.

Elect, 
or neglect to shoulder
the road. Damascus waits
for lunch.

DH

When the war drove you home,
in a green Ford,
I jumped like a fawn.

Teenaged brother to a wounded vet
I didn't yet know bullet whistles, white phosphorous,
or any heroes in heroin terrors.

I learned lightning strikes orchards,
rain drains the living room,
and rolling thunder is what shut eyes see.

The family's Thanksgiving Day smile camouflaged
a poker face of one-eyed jack rabbits ducking fire.
You mentioned the Chaplain's collar cross gleaming

as you chucked fate into a fox hole,
I draw some shine from that, from that
and the sun, dripping tender.