Music for a Girl
I hear their cries from windows
whose dangling purples mark
a strange place for tears, hear
them pounding their chests
to break open their remorse.

They draped you in white, laid
you in light on your mother�s bed
where you were conceived,
where you climbed when the fright
of night stripped down your courage,
and found comfort and safety
and morning. I should pass,

leave the grief to its proper mourners,
those women who wrap you
in the gauze of their sorrow, who cry
and pray to the unrelenting stones
they know so well and lead you,
as you drift, to the kingdom
with their pointing hands,

but I listen still, and their sad
singing rises with the prayer
your sleeping eyes rise through
their chanting, reaching out
its pious and melodic arms
to the stars that shine on them
at night from fabled places.


(first appeared in True Poet Magazine)



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