A Crossing
– for Jean Valentine
Your halo looks like ripples in holy water,
fingers dipped with words, potent
lines reflect cold thirteenth full moon
deep in desperate December, throws
shadows on snow in a cathedral of silver fir
and cries of wild turkeys reverberate off
the stillness and stanzas of Canis Major
as Sirius pulses iridescent light earthward
tracing the path of your crossing, shimmering,
accompanied by a ragged chorus on ascension day,
choir of angels, creatures great and small, goddesses,
mad poets, mere mortals, pagans, and witches
singing loudly over tender gifts scattered in a field of poems.
Pass them on.
Mourning Flowers
-For JMR (1971-2020)
I.
Marie wrote about what the living do i answer by holding my place in books that might save me poems of the geographies of lives i’ve lived buried in the geology of my body like that bookmark Simon cherished like callas when he was dying the one he got at Giovanni’s Room before any of us knew about the fever & dying so many would do
II.
now today word you died cara always almost loving me holding fast laughing hard a notion of what letting go might yield the volta in our poem all style and rhythm defying form once familiar land
this death falls hard in basalt of ink on skin the Triple Morrigan that we shared eruption from the volcano you were smoldering for years from deadly yearning
III.
yellow ray flowers
corolla and ovaries
dark center of disks
phyllaries a tender hand
fields of eternal lightness
IV.
at the end i would read The Book of Tea like you tended your garden (squash corn beans) in the middle of night headlamp on to stop the torrent of nightmare i read pages i tagged years before Okakura reminding us a butterfly is a flower with wings
Kathy Kremins (she/her) is a Newark, New Jersey native and a retired public school teacher. Her book of poetry, Undressing the World, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in June 2022. Kathy’s work appears in The Night Heron Barks, The Stillwater Review, Lavender Review, Divine Feminist Anthology, and other publications.