Good Friday

Colorado.

Sitting on Buffalo Bill's grave.

I do not know what town
this mountain overlooks -
its light now struggling upward
through a sudden snow -
the sun failing to
unseen starlight above.

Midnight

and my eye is on
the gift shop door.

The stillest of all places in that earth,
in that time.


The weight of my expectation
has never slackened.

My children do not understand
distances; the ways roads,
ways through, and hopes
go fragile and wear like
bones.

I am not anxious
for the stories to be gathered together
and revealed;
am sorry for the way
the old hills and rivertowns and causeways
crowd the creases of
unheld maps.

But Good Friday
hides within itself Easter,
and with every hammer strike,
dawn pries stone away from stone.

         (I stumbled down
         mountains,
         returned home again and again to find
         the linen closet door
         inexplicably open.)