The Touch of Your Hand

by

Radiance Angelina Petro

It’s all well and good when the whole descends

to parts, but when it happens the other way

around, all hell breaks loose.

The scent of my mother’s “Here’s My Heart,”

Avon Powder drifted from bedroom to hallway,

from hallway to car, from car into church,

and finally settled in the hymnal she handed to me.

All that just to create a void for the mass

to fall into and me with it.

Prior to heaven, when I parted the waterfall

in front of my cave, I believed in the holy,

and my hat had wings, and I sat with black crickets

as they sipped the midnight.

What does any of that even mean?

It means ghosts respond to affection,

and baby sea-turtles scramble to the sea,

never to feel the shore again, and most poems seek

to awaken.  This one is meant to drowse because,

despite previous terrors, sleep

is still the safest place, and there are ghosts

who need the touch of your hand.

Little Pieces of Mountains and Wings

by

Radiance Angelina Petro

I’ve yet to hear cows discuss frivolous subjects.

When I left home that day, the house lifted

onto chicken legs and followed me.

I went down to the creek to look for therapeutic rocks,

where it was hard for the house to get down there,

but the cloud mother made it, with her lingering cough,

and breath of beer. I collected as many rocks as would fit

into my red windbreaker’s pockets. I found a hawk’s feather

with somber hues, and carefully carried that with me as well.

Back then, there were no humdrum days. I started thinking

there was a “you” in everlasting life, and was glad,

and walked through tunnels of autumn trees

on my way back to the cows to show them the rocks

and the feather.  Along the way I saw a pair of trousers hung on a laundry line,

trying to walk the wind. I leaned over the fence, knowing

the cows had me in their luminous, dark eyes.

One black and white cow twitched its ears, lifted its head, and said,

with a mouth full of grass: “Go home.

There are unwanted peonies and wisteria waiting.”

After a long time, I turned away, thankful my pockets

were full of little pieces of mountains and wings.

Back Then

by

Radiance Angelina Petro

Thursday mornings, the library on York Road,

would throw dozens of disgarded books into the dumpster.

You can bet I climbed in and saved as many as I could.

Back then, I went from disaster to disaster seeking out

survivors of car wrecks and plane crashes, carrying the wounded

to safety. As tragedies unfolded, I was there—

a well-traveled sun retelling the night, out in the open,

where kids slid down twisting slides on the playground,

cudgels of thunder beating clouds into tornados–I was there

shielding the little ones—there were already too many poems

about graves, and dammit to hell I was going

to find shelter for each and every one of those kids.

I learned every step cultivates the way, and immortality is ill,

and who knows why.  But I was there–thwarting death’s heavy demands.

I carried the indwelling Christ, and it was my God given task to save the world.

Christmas Eve, 2005

By Radiance Angelina Petro

One December midnight, on the corner of Liberty and Main,

light snow falling on his shoulders–a man stood wearing full Highland

dress, near a street lamp, playing Amazing Grace on the bagpipes.

I remember thinking: “What the hell?” I walked a little faster.

He stood, staring somewhere far away, notes swirling notes swirling snow,

swirling breath, swirling time–expanding time, spiraling time over drones,

and drones under time, through the night.  I listened, snowflakes falling on my eyelashes—

Amazing Grace swirled over and over, each ending a beginning, a circle

in my chest. I listened until I started getting too cold.  There were presents

to put under the tree, stockings to stuff, I had an hour’s drive home.

I began turning away.  How he could stand the cold I don’t know.

What I do know is: never before, or since, have I ever been so found.

Going Out in the Snow

by

Radiance Angelina Petro

Winter’s ingathering, the lawfulness

of falling snow, little avalanche

when the white hare leaps from the snowy bush.

The morning when you clear

snow from the doorway, and the neighbor’s,

the morning of thin, tin-tasted air.

Knock ice from the gutters, shake branches–

cause flumps of snow to fall upon snow,

try shielding a match in the lamp of your hands.

This is your little portion of madness,

this is the startling, baffling of the senses, this

is the world holding its breath.

Unread Message
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

Who do you think you are?
If you see the lightening flash
it means you’re surviving the storm.

The spinning river of the Milky Way
also carries dark constellations,
and worlds flung like pieces of pottery.

Each moment, born into the future,
under a crimsoning sky, where red snakes
move among ruins, is a chance to memorize ourselves,
and wade belly-deep in the lakes of our wounds.

Oceans become fields, become forests,
bodies resolve themselves into the earth.
Whoever said we were born to be happy?

There are so many hollows and shields,
so many precious metals ensconced in mountains,
so many things blown out of proportion,
and so many places, like Death Gulch
in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, where two trains
collided head-on December 5th, 1921,
due to one unread message, killing twenty-seven,
wounding seventy.

Morning coordinates with the night,
hatching suggested plans and diagrams of wind.

Grab a tattered shawl, fling it over your shoulder,
it’s OK to move out disheveled–there are no solemnities,
and you won’t be shriven—just go.
Your ability to feel awe is still intact,
and try as might to ignore it, but your need to love
still aches.

Movement is our mother-tongue.
The hairs on the backs of our neck are standing.
We’ve read the message. Our heartbeats
reverberate in our blood. It’s time to remember
who we are.

The Living Night
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

The angel said: “Come, enter the time-world.”
I turn, look into the faraway, and think about
how long I’ve lived in the light of an unmoving sun,
and how much I miss sharing personalities with animals,
the madness of dreams, and dawdling in the woods–
I miss tracing Fibonacci spirals on distant landscapes–
I miss analogies, meridians, unmapped roads,
and the sounds of wind tangled in trees,
I miss self-generated songs, and the long purposes
of daydreams, I miss cardinal numbers,
and I think about all the Pandora’s boxes waiting
to be opened–I miss following the one who laughs
and leaves cloven-hoof prints in the wet grass–
I want to rescue Blake’s half-dead dragon,
and so, looking up at the angel, I smile
(not yet showing my teeth), and if you listen
to the faraway in the living night, you will hear
whispers, and the laughter of mischief-planning,
and the stiff, stirring of wings.

Today I Saw a Snail
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

Walking the Lavender Trails
up to the Andorra Meadow Loop,
umbrella poplars broadening the day,
I grow accustomed to soft sounds,
and no sounds, and sounds that enter
my soul-shaped body.

Today,

chaos isn’t hounding my heels,
the devil isn’t making fires
in my bones, and I’ve wept enough
to put an end to tears, and when

I left the house,

I saw a snail raise its retractable horns,
and frogs lift their eyes in Wind Dance Pond,

and you and I are still alive,

and the day will not ask anymore of us
as we share our feathered lives, and turn
a little closer to one another.

How about we believe in the world again.

Five Little Poems of Death
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

Look around—say it:
“Death is here.” Nothing
better to strengthen
the heart. Make a gesture
as if in protest? Close the door
and find something to tie
it fast? Try untying the ribbon
from your hair. Death’s robes
are not folds of dark upon dark.
They are embroidered with roses,
and light as air.

***

During the night, death, like
the smell of bread and cornfields
loosens itself from the trees,
descends into the bright morning, gently
apologizes for any trouble it may have
caused, and then changes the fatiguing
mind and love’s special grief,
into its own nourishment
for the long journey home.

***

Death is homeless–
afoot in the world,
trying to missionize
anyone. A homeless
death is chaos, relentless
in trying to enter
our story, with the hope
that we are just as lost
as they are.

***

Be mindful, they say–missing the obvious–
an overture gone profoundly wrong.
Just know they have never left the city even once.
Death is in our skin, and whatever goes missing
when we focus the breath will return found–our love of stuff,
our local ancestry of what may have once been called home.

***

What have I done? This ecological truth,
the footprints, this damage control,
this ragged edge of being alive.
In some corner of myself the belligerent
wound will not scab—the debt I owe
to my children and grandchildren
beyond where I stand.

***

Leaning Towards the World
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

God knows the very last evening–
the small, gold locket found
among the puff of feathers on the ground.
Say what you will leaning
towards the world—tragedy comes
unexpectedly confounding fact
and fantasy. And what’s inside
the locket that once made the bird
fly a little faster, will one day
become a weight too heavy to bear.