Defining Enshrinement
Belief in love beyond death's dominion gives this drawer lightness
though no sun rays or moon pass.
Imagine ash as pure calcium, silica-sifted
to sheen all the bones horizon-radiant.
Surely these have weathered such blue-flaming transformation,
a rite of passage in an end meant to promise everlasting peace.
That is holiness enough for anyone
omitting the semantics of religion
where some declare such blasphemous
without the body to rise re-atomized
at God's Abracadabra.
Oh foolish nitpickers of apples vs. oranges
even in the face of finality, let tongues lie silent
breath-held in solemnity as if for a host like a lozenge.
Must respect be pictured as coins upon lids to pay the ferryman?
Why not allow these small spaces sliding to shutting
as a blessing of serenity be they rose-quartz, granite or marble?
Stone holds this still quietness as a sacrament
& the sanctified flesh as the pearl grit of sand.
Breath is molecular everywhere
even when apparently there is no air movement
while the chants of monks rise like paper lanterns nearby.
Heaven passes such distances as origami cranes
after the crafty fingers have vanished
with the intricacy of filigree, that silver, then tarnish
mirroring the patterns of becoming nothingness
surely as cotton white mourning clothes sky-delivered by smoke.
That blackness too is a disappearance
while it happens as memory screen-projected
though perhaps no drummer boy of all the five senses
is even there to bear witness
for what ossuary fields should be filled with poppies,
red even for the citizens, the peasants, gone to soldiers everyone
where heads should be tossed back at the very least
as mouths howling to know the least of these unknown,
like an x as a cross for all the unmarked spots.
Stephen Mead is a retired Civil Servant, having worked two decades for three state agencies. Before that his more personally fulfilling career was fifteen years in healthcare. Throughout all these jobs he was able to find time for writing poetry/essays and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid for this work. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall. This is an online site.
Amethyst Review 