PROPINQUITY

Coiled acid strands
lash my heart and mind and hands to yours
in threads longer than a generation,
thinner than a wish.

Ancestral chemistry
embroidered you and me
as half the same (statistically). We are a set.
There’s nothing held within my skin
that yours might not contain,
save for chance piercing of the germ.

Bound by parents’ fertile stitch
we are swathed in filaments
a helical cocoon — too tight
at times, this fibrous web.

But taut or slack — we’ll never crack
the cipher in our blood and bones
without enormous strain
against the simple codes
that crimp our ears and web our toes.

Chromosomes are pentimento
in the marrow of our sibling cores.

DEATH WATCH

A white cat stalked my house
for many days,
walking in and out of all my rooms
in a rhythm of its own determination,
never making sounds
unless you count
the purr
that shook
the chandelier
just before it left.

When it went
it passed right through the outer wall
to the stillness of my garden.
The cat looked back at me.

It had my mother’s eyes.

LACTEOUS

At the Chapel of Saint Ignatius,
a sculptor has installed
a Madonna carved of
gray-veined marble.
At the top, where Her head would go,
is a tilted gold bowl,
facing forward

although it might not be real gold —
could just be gilt.

Either way, the bowl pours
a healthy flow of alabaster milk
over its rim, and

that’s what matters.

Of course, it’s all wrong anatomically
but immaculate
in concept.

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