The Soul Slinger

You know how to do it --
you've done it many times.
First you look for a sturdy branch
which forks into a Y,
you trim it and tailor it,
turn it this way and that,
hold it up against the sun,
and let it gather the span
of the sky. Then you attach,
skillfully, an elastic band
to both prongs and give it
a careful try, testing the reach,
feeling the snugness in the hand,
listening for your cue.

The world gets quiet and waits, perched,
to see you try.

And you know what to do.
When the first beam of light
streams in, and the good
wind rises in the leaves,
you're alert to the subtle sounds
of those feet whose tread
you know almost as yours.
You lift the sling, pull the band,
and let it fly, your soul,
wishing it godspeed and
a pair of open arms
where it lands, and even
time has stopped to watch
the magic of hope unfold.

The Last Spectacle

Where we stopped for a break between
the monastery and the cave deep in the countryside,
the landscape was not spectacular:
hills spreading out in broad green strokes,
the stifling blue of the cloudless sky
spilling over and weighing heavy
on the thick humming air, and someone,
my brother perhaps, lying in a field of wheat,
his thoughts suspended, his arms outstretched.

What was spectacular -- and then
beyond spectacular, and then
awkward, quickly becoming
disconcerting, disorienting, and destabilizing
as when you turn and swim right into
your own slipstream --
was the gleaming half-moon of my mother's
behind, in the bushes where we crouched
to pee, I a short distance from her turned back.

The privacy and sheer indecency of the sight
announced the end of something, or, rather,
an unwilling return, a pre-state which closed
one of concentric circles, filling the air with omens
I sensed but couldn't yet read. A few days later,
she was gone and I should have known the nakedness
I came from was waving a last goodbye,
and there, in the bushes, crouching and conflicted,
I was staring at the last time I was her child.