Edward Ahern, Irregular Images

excerpt

Author: Edward Ahern
Publisher: Fairfield Scribes
Date: March 31, 2019
Length: 127 pages
ASIN: B07Q3SQKN1

God’s New Clothes

So little left of the old garments.
The fewer and older priests
face us robed in apologies.
Shrill tailors of God’s message.
Costumed nuns have died away
replaced by off-the-rack laity.

The churning suits and dresses
that draped across the pews
have worn thin and sparse.
Churches are cast off
like Good Will overcoats.
And strictures are raggedly observed.

Yet some of us still wear faith,
displaying hand-me-downs in a church
no longer fashionable.
We’re not dressed as we were,
and unsure of holy style,
but hopeful of our future ensemble.

The Sparrow Nest

The egg-fat sparrow
squats in the gutter-end
under my eave.
Brown and dirty beige,
soft chirping and stoic.

The gutter’s held nests
for fourteen years
and sparrows live but five.
A granddaughter stares back,
wondering why my hatchlings
never returned to brood.

I refuse to yank the nests
or tack on mesh
despite communion-wafer guano.
We’re in residence,
the egg-fat bird and I.

Ice Out

Winter lets go of the river
with parting waves of snow
and growling goodbyes
as jumbled slabs of ice,
piled shore to shore,
grind stream-grass into confetti
and toted boles of trees
drift on gelid voyages
into flotsam diaspora.