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| Weathered Spire |
with the weight
of a second beating heart.
Ocean Vuong
Headfirst
For the odd five minutes or so
and depending on
the exact angle of the sun
and depending on
the cloud cover and if
a bit of rain in the night
the sun turns the small stand
of tall pines from green to briefly
copper. Or bronze. Depending
on your vantage or your
astigmatism. I know,
I said that yesterday,
in a different poem. But it was in
a different poem. It was Mother's
Day and i was thinking maybe
she'd been facing me
from the ease and being so tall now
and so far gone she'd augur
my day and I'd be briefly free
of her and believe there were
times when she was free of me too
like she wanted to be.
It's different today, the copper/
bronze, because I've waited
for it, it's not new anymore.
I watched the compass of my thoughts
tempted by lesser magnitudes
hove on that invisible anchor
and drift finally, though still
trembling, settle true. I don't know
how to use a real compass but I can
say I am gravitating to the shifting
blue the sun is illuminating. Today
the poet said it was a different blue
than the mantle they painted
on Mary and how that color came
to be coveted by Popes. Like
they owned it. Like we children
of some lesser god were so hunched
under our yokes we couldn't look
up and see how broad and free
it was over our heads. Hail Mary.
There are some mothers your grace
can't save though maybe saving
isn't at all what they wanted and maybe
you knew that all
along. Beneath that blue robe
you're the same color
as the canopy of pines and weeping
beeches. When the sun comes
from such a longitude as it does
along the drawn assumptions of
men trying to get there, wherever
there is, these brief days mean
I'll see it and I'll think of you
and her like I think without thinking
come sunup I'll be doing something
motherly but I'm not sure what.
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