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.