onyx crowns (headstones and the brush of winter)

she credits the metal bars
for finding footing in sunday soils,
the stone slips down the fronting steps,
slick in rain -

(and rock, and rock, and rock,)

there is a fading kind of shout;
the clouds are the sky in her muted,
mystery-failed militia, and to arms
went the ploughshares, not to return
until the evening tone of the cathedral
brought them home

this skin is paltry, the eyes, the eyes -
a phantom carved into the brushed-steel
of these ancillary altars

the winter wrought everything,
and struck it from her hands:
"fresh out of ploughshares, dear" -
not an apology, just
the truth