O Lady of Sorrows,

with pink balloons on razor wire

tied to alabaster wrists,

lift your heavy, doleful eyes

off the ruin of my chest

where footprints in dried mud

tell of hidden life gone before

and now awaiting another solitude

to return.

You left unpruned this apple tree

sprung from the core a distracted missionary

pitched into the poison ivy off the road:

sour fruit but quite possibly

sinking even now into deeper sweetness,

so long as this Indian summer persists.

Were we simply to sit down together

and take time to upturn all

the pieces already spread  haphazard

across this altar,

I feel we might just get a fit.

A fool like me hopes and believes

a little

more each hour in the starry turquoise

of your shawl.