Absolution

In these crossover miles...a luminous wake.

                                          Brenda Peterson

Clouds arch and dive along the skyline.

A school  of black and silver

crossing over

from night into morning.

 

A cool storm

rides on their backs; and women sit

(long-haired and beaded)

on a  hill  praying

for wind to portage

their sorrow,

their frailty

their anger

overhead into the flood.

.

An outpour that slathers

the hillside in mud

loosening rock, uprooting stumps and dry growth;

tumbling the debris

of a long season

into the canyon's pit

where carrion birds have left

a  reef of wild bones.

 

And  women sit on a hill

praying that afterwards

the  clouds will cross

over again- pale and calm

inversing them

of what has gone and given way to light.