Today's poem is by Gordon Henry

Relative X:
A White Clay
Tabernacle of Grief
       

of longing, unwrapped parcels of lost joy,
survival school books, margins
with poorly drawn broken hearts, empty
mirrors, wash basin and rear view, useless
timepieces, worn down to a last hour an
interval less than a stopped second

Tobacco ties, bowls of beads for unmade
giveaway thunderbirds, BIA checkstubs
A glass ashtray your mother threw at some
deer hunter shadow of betrayal in the
doorway

A hissing cassette recording of Ring of Fire
sung by the army vet face on the drunk
punch wall, who waved the gun at
us last Christmas then set fire to his own
childhood regalia

There's an unblessed host in there too,
a book of matches from some white bar in
Walker, Park Rapids or Wadena, a poorly
developed photo of a blonde from Anoka,
a page lifted from the Invisible Musician,
a baseball cup, a Kennedy half dollar from
a confirmation sponsor, an illegible prescription
for persistent pain, the dried white
chrysanthemum, wedding flower, a bullet
from the pistol your aunt threw into
the white clay river, after your grandfather died, a
singer's drumstick from the drum, with
only one living singer left

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Copyright © 2022 Gordon Henry All rights reserved
from Spirit Matters
Holy Cow! Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission