STARTING WITH A LINE FROM THOMAS MERTON
Love winter when the plant says nothing,
when skies remind us of hospital sheets,
when earth is entombed in snow, when a random wing
from an unnamed bird casts shadows so deep
they might have been thrown by an unrepentant Satan,
when leaves abandon color and shape
to elope with shards, when homes barred with prism
daggers switch their Welcome mats to Stay Away.
Love husbands, love wives, when the talk is nothing
but Good Morning, Good Night, Turn Over,
when affection takes a backseat to housekeeping,
when vows are for worse, for sickness, for poorer.
And love the soul when the mind says Nothing.
Trust faith to set roots while it’s sleeping.
AWAKE AND EAT
Church Sign Triolets
Feed the stranger under your coat,
dress for action, and have your lamps lit.
For poison despair, here’s the antidote:
feed the stranger under your coat,
that part of you shrinking from lack of hope
and faith in the infinite.
Feed the stranger under your coat,
dress for action, and have your lamps lit.
~
If the heart wills, the foot begins to dance.
Be even better than you are.
Pain is of no significance—
if the heart wills, the foot begins to dance
into a quadrille inheritance
strummed on a sunflower guitar.
If the heart wills, the foot begins to dance.
Be even better than you are.
~
Be the seasons, welcome change.
Life begins at the next exit.
Destiny isn’t prearranged—
be the seasons, welcome change—
spirit has unlimited range
and youth is not prerequisite.
Be the seasons, welcome change.
Life begins at the next exit.
~
Awake and eat; the journey is great.
We must become nothing.
No time to rest and vegetate—
awake and eat; the journey is great—
the path will not accommodate
souls knotted in coveting.
Awake and eat; the journey is great.
We must become nothing.
~
This world is fading away.
Wake up as much as you can.
April leaves turn iron-gray
come fall. This world is fading away.
Live as if now was our last today,
an empty bowl our talisman.
This world is fading away.
Wake up as much as you can.
STILL LIFE MYSTERY
two pears–one green, hard, innocent of rot,
the other marbled-yellow ripe, juice seeping through the peel
onto a carving knife fit for the guillotine—
amber handle, nickel blade, rusted flecks
of undetermined origin that are not
from the loaf of farmer’s bread beside it,
the bread’s body thick as flesh, its dermal crust thin
as the blue gingham napkin folded into a crane
(is a Nisei mourner in the picture?),
the crane pecking holes in some yesterday’s paper,
the news all fantastic (but what’s been cut out?
has something been changed? why can’t we read the print?),
underneath all, the butcher block table, scarred clear to the bone
as any sacrificial altar…and just off canvas,
where we almost don’t notice,
someone deadman floats in the naked air.
Allen’s poems have previously appeared in The Cream City Review, The Southern Review, Tundra, Tar River Poetry, and Margie. Upcoming poems will be in Anglican Theological Review, Christianity and Literature, and Barbaric Yawp. She is currently preparing for publication a manuscript tentatively titled Small Pictures.