Outrunning Trains

Like a child outrunning trains
Her long hair flying in figure eights
Ribbons and bows kissing
The butterfly wings
Leading the skylarks
As formation queen
She runs

With the place in her heart
Whose lifetime is a hollow
Waiting only for this moment
To be filled

Like a young bride
Whose heart is a clock
Tick tock, tick tock
Until time shouts out
This time – my time –
Collects the seconds
Her trousseau
She listens

But the train
Outruns her
And her braided eights
No longer infinities in the air
Kiss the butterflies goodbye
And the birds move south
And the clock winds down
Until every hour is the same hour
And the seconds grow dusty
In their yellow tissue paper

And she dips her heart in bronze
Like baby shoes
Its chambers hard
Like hollow bells
She hangs the clappers
That strike the sounds
That echo dreams

And she listens to the
Eights of infinity
As they ride the winds
Round and round
In the place of her heart

She lays her head down
She listens.

Lamentations: From a People-in-Mourning

In the Holy Land
After the bus bombs,
After the restaurant bombs,
After the market bombs,
We plant people
Instead of trees
And the forests grow
In grey stone.