The hands of all my mistakes
       

are clapping wildly like aspens in a squall. The blackbird is flying away
from the unappeasable wasp. Everything is disappearing, especially
the reddish egret—no pale blue eyes on the Tamiami Trail. Science
is a magic show, all of us scurrying through tunnels to appear
unharmed at the back of the room. God, who's always loved
a game of chicken, has been court-ordered into therapy. I know
because we sometimes share the backseat of my grandmother's
Buick Riviera, cruise into Paris where God, being God, falls in love
with the Dark and Stormy at Le Mary Céleste. We end up, as always,
at Père Lachaise, throwing ourselves at Apollinaire's grave.
Who says no one swoons when they walk straight up to death?

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Copyright © 2020 Martha Silano All rights reserved
from Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission