
angel, image by Andre Eggenschwiler, on Pixabay
WRIT IN MOONLIGHT
It marks me as a child of time—
the changing moon that measures out my days.
All life is change.
This roiling road dust moons have tracked,
criss-crossing and overlapping routes that end
with waning light.
The monthly moon that draws so close
coats my tongue or standing at a distance
liquifies into the lake.
It pulls upon an inland sea, as cold
as stone, with questions pinned to both my eyes
doubts flood to fill.
In that space any answers come
from darkness, pretending to be light
with varied names: Hunter's, Blood, or Worm.
Other luminescences filled the yard:
jars of fireflies, or the first star meant for wishes
that never worked.
Did even one star notice any wish
or the tiny deaths they winked at and returned
to their own lonely place?
If I opened wide my eyes, would stars
spill out, as I burst with fire, which is what love
fashions out of me?
*
VIA CRUCIS: A GOOD FRIDAY DEATH
He would not last through Friday afternoon,
the nurses said; at least it would be soon.
The others came, and each one stayed a shift,
an hour to watch him wake and slowly drift.
He said he heard celestial music boom,
like William Blake when angels filled his room,
and dreamt a greedy dream: reunion there
with people loved and lost in empty air.
A photo caught him laughing—not forlorn—
a time when none here watching had been born.
His death would solve for them a rising tension:
fear he would outlive his meagre pension.
Each hoped unscathed to dodge mortality,
like the soul that none of them could see.
"Do you love me, love me, love?" It burned
his throat—these words for which he always yearned.
The world was where he never found a place,
or made a judgment he himself could face.
None would say a rosary, but spoke
how he would vanish soon in faceless smoke,
a livid corpse until on Easter Day
to rise from sweaty sheets and fly away.
He startled them with his long, final breath:
"Now and at the hour of our death."
_________________________

Royal Rhodes is a poet and retired educator.
He lives now in rural Ohio, amid Amish farms
and sheep pastures. His poems have been
published in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.
He spends his days reflecting on the wonder
of God's good earth.
July 2024 issue
Amazing poems by Royal Rhodes: from the agonizing "Do you love me, love me, love?" to
"would stars
spill out, as I burst with fire, which is what love
fashions out of me?
Powerful work, so glad I read these poems this evening.