by David Wyatt

The winter–bloom of stones
                        Philip Boatright

And rock, also, even at its coldest,
Sends light back to the sun.
Who’s watching the reaction?
Windows glazed, seemingly useless.
A newspaper slaps the front door
But stories in it are those
Of the Pleistocene.  A neighbor
Walks past the house, her dog
Sniffing out faint yet still crystalline snow.
The woman squints, pulling on the leash.
Who notices the stones wilting? —
This early.

by David Wyatt

A day could go in several directions, noise
Everywhere when I glimpse a familiar Presbyterian spire.
Monday doesn’t work so well for churches.
Even suddenly appearing doors, thick as a vault’s,
A splash of sad red paint.  They are fog soon
Along with Jesus, released again from the tomb.
Vagaries of shadows and stained-glass,
Decidedly clearer this morning, now amid siren wail.
The opportunist has his hands full of perfect
Chances; meet, for instance, the ambulance
At the sufferer’s house — who’s to know the one
Injured, or shouting “false alarm.”

by Marie Gray Wise

In the living room, my mother groans,
staring at a small Blessed Mother statue,
turning her head from side to side —
an equilibrium exercise —
all counterpoised with a description of pain
and a lament twice as long.

In the kitchen, I scrub the counter harder
tell myself to take her seriously
because she is old.
But I treat her complaint
like an old recording — no,
like an echo —
of the sobs that oozed
from beneath the bedroom door
when my baby brother died.

My ears are full of tears
shed thirty years ago.
Why won’t she be quiet
behind that door?
Why won’t she wipe her eyes
and ask about me?

by Marie Gray Wise

You told me nothing about them
a scrounge of old records on Ancestry
paints their histories

A department store before World War II
a young woman with curly blond hair
strides behind a cosmetics counter
It’s Utah, so sunshiny dust brushes the air

A young man with a slanted smile
and a fedora in his hand approaches

Like you, he’s ready with a smart-guy comment
shoots it over the compacts and lipsticks
ashine in their heavy gold cases

Unlike you, he backs it up
spirits her away from the counter
whisks her across country
as part of his dream

Unlike her, I watch from above
as you wade dusty sunshine
down the outside flight of steps
to a journey in my opposite direction

No official record exists of this occasion —
the story ends without a trace