Mary, and: White, and: Some Things Tear Shaped

Mary

    The halo in the Annunciation painting is screwed on too tight.    The angel's robe has turned breathless pink.

    I also once felt

    A quickening:

    Clamor, tears, and candle-delight    Like a child's birthday party that would never end,    Sick from too many crème-roses,    Diamonds dropping from my tinfoil tiara.

Mary without any remark:Her small round smile.

Outside the leaf blower soundsLike a clutter of wingsFrom the Fra Angelico card I'm sending my mother:

Her old mind fraying into the firmament.

White

Roses like the sky, a gold veil I sleep through every morning:    yellow roses, scarlet around the edges—

common as children.        You can't cut them out:

scent of white roses, dizzy as smoke.

The teenage boys are inside their houses mesmerizedby blood from the terrorist

who splatters across the computer screen in petal shapes:    or the torn draft cards another generation threw into the air—

My son believes he is allergic to cut flowers like his foreign-born father.

I am the fading hysterical bouquet:

               STOP PLAYING THAT SHOOTING GAME

Outside his father is slashing back the garden,trudging through the kitchen door to drench his hands

and rinse away the interior of roses.

Later he emerges in a black velvet cap,silver-stitched Arabian Nights slippers,

gesturing to us with a curved-up toe:

Notice anything different?

                  Out of the ordinary?Are you on alert?

Some Things Tear Shaped

The trees holding snow sequins in their arms.

Holly: a red of weeping across the windowpane.

Contradictory wind from nowhere.

A crow soars up,lit-morning: to be that deep blackyou must become something shiny.

Crows dull as dust on an overcast day.An old woman became bird bones.

She would not eat.

I sat by her bedside.Oh don't cry, she saidsaying my name as full as rain.

It could have beenearly childhood          willow tree            summer

when I would have done anything for her.

She would not let me touchher skin frail as the clouds are flying veils—

Curtains closed by the clear-eyed nursewearing false eyelashes.