Poem of the Day

Grandfather Outside

There are sadnesses which cast in one's soul the shadows of monasteries.
                            —E. M. Cioran We arrived too late for the sundial.
            The monks were bats circling
stone paths: we watched
the glow of their lamps in the garden
            as they pulled the onions
for our meal. That night I dreamt
you and I were walking
            underwater. Orange jellyfish
rose like suns. We couldn't speak.
So slowly, we moved together
            against the tide. Until you
disappeared into a submarine wood
not unlike the one bordering
            the monastery
that long night in Romania.
                        *
Near midnight, the monks sang
            through blue corridors of incense
as if tuning the dark
to the low note of their devotion.
            The halos of each painted saint
glowed like winter wheat.
They said they kept their mass
            through the dead of night
so that Christ, crying falcon,
plummeting alone
            through Gethsemane
would be caught by the threads
of a net so loyal it stretched
            backwards through time. I never knew
that days were held together by singing.
Or that those who suffered
            could be attended to
long after they had gone.
                        *
Now, one year after your death
            the radio crackles Rachmaninoff—
a nocturne that won't end.
Alone in the sacristy, I found the ankle
            bone of John the Baptist. Displayed
in a carved foot of wood. I could
imagine his ghost walking those
            grounds. Wild in the garden, baptizing
piles of raw beets as they split in the sun.
Maybe tonight he'll bless me.
            With a simple gift, one a ghost could
give. Something like snow falling
over the morning you died. Emptying
            yourself into the exhausted
arms of a hospital bed.