Morning Mass on Mothers’ Day

A Morning Mass on Mothers’ Day

I arose Sunday morn in the misting,
Half hooded, I pulled back the shroud,
From the bed to the bath faintly listing,
With the canopy covered in cloud.

I pulled on my pants in the darkness,
I slipped on the soft cotton shirt,
I left the back door slightly open,
And trekked down the moist narrow dirt.

It was morning, all misty the meadow,
The river was smooth as a glass,
I bent by the edge of a hedgerow,
And peered through the door to the mass.

Spring beauties sat straight in the narthex,
The lily lamps towered anew,
The bleeding hearts hung by the windows,
Each one held a tear drop of dew.

And there in the front at the altar
Of a moss-covered log and a stone,
Stood the Lincoln green lad in the pulpit,
Silent and straight and alone.

I paused, turned an ear to his sermon,
Though he spoke not a word to the air,
So telling I couldn’t work a word in,
As I knelt in the silence right there.

A Mothers’ Day sermon on Sunday,
In the midst of the flowering wood,
Near the bend of the silent still water,
Where a Jack-in-the-Pulpit stood.

5/12/2013

“Jack-int-the-Pulpit” 2013 © Brian T. Maurer

Spring migration

Like streptococcal chains
Against a microscopic backdrop
Of white circular sky
Gaggles of geese dot the far horizon,
Frozen in flight.

Streptococcus pyogenes

Three Crows

Sunday was cold,
Still in the air a chill
From last week’s snow,
But enough sun to melt
The deep white patches down.

I stood in the back yard
Studying the leaf-strewn beds
By the high wooden fence.
There in the slanted sunlight
Clusters of snowdrops
Had reappeared,
Hearty white pearls
Suspended on green stalks,
Bright against the receding snow.

A squirrel descended,
Dancing down the fence cap
In leaps and bounds,
His mouth stuffed with
Late autumn leaves.
I watched him disappear
Into the neighbor’s tree,
Then up the side of his house
Into the eaves.

Suddenly the silence ended,
Broken by three crows
Alighting high up
On wispy budding branches
Of the tall silver maple
Beyond the weathered fence.

There they perched and squawked,
Black against the blue sky:
Winter intruders,
Unwilling to acknowledge
The sure coming of spring.

“Snowdrops” by Brian T. Maurer

Text and photo copyright 2013 by Brian T. Maurer

Forgive me, Johann

Forgive me, Johann.
You were so quiet, uncomplaining
Your father seemingly so calm
Matter-of-fact in the way
He explained the course
Of your illness.
This can’t be anything serious,
I thought, as I surveyed the scene.
But then—
You cried out in pain
When I squeezed your calves,
You grimaced as you stood
Clutching the exam table,
Unable to take more than
Two halting steps toward
Your father’s outstretched arms.
I lifted you back up,
Tapped your knees with a rubber hammer
No response, no reflexive recoil
The Achilles were the same:
Absent.
Graciously, your father accepted
A copy of my note
The directions to the hospital
He lifted you into his arms
And carried you out through the door
As though you were a newborn babe
Wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Forgive me, Johann;
I neglected to say good-bye—
My next patient anxiously waited
In the wings.

2013 © Brian T. Maurer

Lost sonatas

Had we been writ three-quarter time
I could’ve waltzed you round the floor;
We might have made the perfect rhyme—
A couplet in three-quarter time,
Perhaps a score, or more.

Were we composed allegro pace
Our eighth notes would have danced!
We might have rushed up tempo, faced,
And held the note, entranced—
A coda of romance!

Across the sky time cast our stars
Yours rose, while mine had set;
Sonatas hold so many bars,
And strings possess no fret;
Still—no performance, no regret.

2013 © Brian T. Maurer

Snow shakes down

Snow shakes down from shrouded sky,
And blankets fields indifferently:
Snow obeys no “No Trespassing” sign,
Hops every fence, wall and hedgerow,
Observes no civil boundaries.
Snow, the universal carte blanche,
Covers all without lament.

Man, on the other hand, curses
And kicks back at the counterpane
With shovel, plow and blower;
Mechanically redistributes it
In mounds on streets and sidewalks.

Today I donned my snowshoes
Broke trail, crossed unbounded fields;
I paused, looked back to see—
My shallow silent tracks
Soon filled with wind-whisked snow.

“Breaking Trail” © Brian T. Maurer

Wing and Wind

The wing was designed for the wind.
It was the wind that carved and crafted it.
And after the work was done, the wind stepped back
To admire its handiwork.
No one has seen the wind, only its effects.
The wing, sensing lift, soars upward:
Tucks, drops, spreads, recovers—
An aerial display of pure delight.
The wing knows the draftsman that designed it
The wing knows the craftsman that refined it
The wing knows,
And as the wind flows,
It shows.

If we would be designers of wings
We should study aeronautical engineering.
If we would fly
We need only lift our wings
To catch the wind.

2013©Brian T. Maurer

New Year haiku

“Waning Gibbous” © Brian T. Maurer

Gibbous wanes
Icicle fingers descend—
New Year dawns

2013©Brian T. Maurer

No metaphor in Obudu

Condensed from warm shadows,
She appeared with silent ox-eyes, yellowed;
Her feverish infant sweating,
Head pressed on flaccid breast.
I bid her sit; and so we sat
Side by side on a wooden bench
In the warm evening shadows.

Slowly, she undid the drape
That held the babe against her breast,
Pulled off the woolen cap;
His curls matted with feverish brine.
He had his mother’s eyes,
Yellow to the core.
Shallow pants of airy puffs
Stroked his jaundiced palate.

In this last hour of this last day
I begged a course of drugs,
Slipped the packet of pills
Into the mother’s moist palm.
When we boarded the bus, I wondered
Which would run out first—
The ten-day supply of medication or
The tiny racing heart?

In vain I searched my mind
For metaphors, just one;
But none crystallized in the grey
Matter of my cerebrum,
None sprung forth as Athena
From the tightness in my chest.

2012©Brian T. Maurer

November Snow

With falling snow
A certain silence descends
And for a moment
Behind the white curtain
Time stops.
All of that which makes up a life
Those things of burning importance
Suddenly seem of no importance now.
Only the snow
The snow descends,
Obliterating the sea of senses;
Only the snow
The snow descends,
White-washing the world
In numbness.

2012©Brian T. Maurer