Jeanne Murray Walker

We check the empty rooms, close the door.
Music vanishes. Finches flash by
and disappear.  
...

Be present with your want of a Deity
and you shall be present with the Deity.
Thomas Traherne

This is what our wandering life has come to.
Our dead stay where they’re put, in different states.
We buried her beside the Texan, who
also loved her. Then we closed the gates.

the morning when she finds the tomb empty
leaps from her the way the first spry geyser
sprang from the Titanic. She bangs her knee
and ducks to look again. Her adviser,...

On the gallery wall in Paris you see a
splendid life-size thigh, how it’s tapering
to a calf and pointed toe.   It’s a Degas...

The organ swings into the invitation hymn,
slinging us around the known world
toward the apogee of surrender,
Oh Muse of Scripture, Muse of Choice,...

When the monarch can finally trust herself
to look, she sees nothing but bright motion
down there, a billiant heave, spinning shelf
on spinning shelf, the tons of pouring ocean.

Then my mother became my child.
I'd felt so light on the teeter-totter
that I was surprised by such power,
holding someone so important...

I can hear thunder grind against the earth,
vibrate with imprecations. Nature's
tossing down her gauntlet,
promising extended sieges,
threatening to lock us in tragedy...

The tiny whitecaps
bare their rotten teeth
all morning
as wind berates rainwater,
as razors of rain
gash its surface
and then the thunder...

Give me a sign, I pray, and then I see
For Sale (Price Reduced) and smile
at the Almighty's roguish sense of humor,

The moonrise on the cheek of snow.
Words that charm me while I sleep.
When I get up, what do I know?
The meaning's gone. No residue.

Don't tell me I didn't see it, the red flower budding,
that radiant tiny shirt our hibiscus pulled on
to celebrate the summer. Don't tell me the bloom was not—

She’s on life support. Racing to get there,
his Jaguar fishtails on the frozen highway.
She was a beauty and elusive as the future,...

The bag I drag is solid as earth, clods
I couldn’t shake off roots
reeking of rocks and blackness,
the kind of dirt they’ll use to bury us....

Speaking of Houdini and escape,
of Spring, this Spring, there being
no General or Eternal Spring,

yesterday I saw a blue pickup...

Wasn’t it Augustine who said, evil is matter
out of place? He kisses his love
as he pivots from the brothel gate,
his ardent heart already gritty
with guilt. I imagine the big A...

Suppose I scooped the whole sky in my hand,
I couldn’t hold it. Yet hearing a goldfinch,
I feel, well, yes, that tiny song might clench...

This is the last outrage, what women do
in secret, slipping their fingers under bras or nightgowns
on wild, moon-driven nights, needing to true...