Mary Leary

Blurs

Lime-green shining through striped glass
could be aquarium or murky aftermath -
could be good or could be bad.

Mint tea tasting like a forest
barely remembered,
warm shells cooking into cooling sand.
Your love, my love, a profusion -
when it doesn’t just shadow  past  passions,
this poem
could be new or could be old.

“I greet the god within you,”
is met with flinches, loss of attention
before the tattooed man asks why
I only recite parts of the Lord’s Prayer.
When I say I can only echo
resonance, he doesn’t listen. 

Contrite, assured, afraid,
I confide in a kind  hunter. Had never known hunters
could be good or bad
or that I might defend any religion
to those who have made enemies of whatever
is uneasily understood.

Moved and frightened
by the voice booming, “Magic,”
I will never willingly immerse  my head

yet with each sunset
submerge further
into alliance
with those stars we could barely see
through his cheap telescope,
bright little
blurs.


© 2009 Mary Leary