dtanoury@ix.netcom.com 

The Ascension
For Klaus

Pumps crushed on the concrete
Left near a doorway
Side by side and upright
Next to steel pipe where
Blue mosaic tiles border a crimson pilaster

The pavement is wet from rain
And its grayness is like the sky
And I think God took the owner of these shoes
Took her
Body and soul

He lifted her up
Ascension style
For anyone with shoes so broken
Must be saintly and pure
From walking the hard roads

Merciful God
Take me too just like her
Leave my sneakers standing
Solitary on the sidewalk
Relics for poets

© Copyright, Doug Tanoury, 11/28/99.

Bells

Now and again I remember
The rustle of my cassock and surplice
As I walk toward the altar

In a way that comes and goes
I recall a bronze domed campanile
And the ringing of bells

That chime now through
Old neighborhoods of memory
Presiding still profoundly

Over the poverty
Through arched breezeways of my past
Down colonnades of my childhood

Music from the organ echoes
And the rising soprano of a boy’s voice
Sings Latin hymns

And holds and lingers
On what seems an impossible note
Breathless and forever

© Copyright, Doug Tanoury, 11/27/99.

Rain

In dim light from Main Street
The rain falls quiet from a lapis sky
And makes the asphalt
Cut and polished onyx

Feminine the lightness
With which it falls
Womanish the wetness
Of vaporous mist

Puddles grow and make
The pavement an obsidian surface
Rippled in random fashion
By invisible drops

The source of which seems
To bubble up from below
Rather than sprinkle and
Strike from above

The rain resting
In cool dampness against
The lustrous blackness
The hardness of night

© Copyright, Doug Tanoury, 11/26/99.
All Rights Reserved. Printed by Permission.