Reiki Rain
from my chapbook, LIMINALOG (see the Bookstore)
first published in LYNX, October 2004
Tree Riesener
Can’t depend on curing your recurring ills yearly
with Easter cake and champagne?
You need a hand on your head, traffic director
conducting the green light of reiki rain.
Keep prowling lions and the angel of death away
by concocting covered dish suppers;
feed the shift sleeping inside and
the ones sleeping their week in the joint-achey rain.
Not a paper towel, sponge or tampon, healer,
keep a finger in heaven’s dyke;
don’t let curfew ring until we’re strong enough to be cured;
hold back the breaking rain.
Terror! No one here for your remaining days;
a watery bit of gold, a cold grey sky;
at breakfast endure with all-night-soaked cornflakes,
watching snowflakey rain.
Throw mercy into the mix. Tomatoes benefit
from a pinch of salt, corn from sugar.
S and M, who’s on top today, who’s on bottom?
Slaughter hides in mandrake rain.
London bridge is falling down;
lovers suckle in our arms, the door turns,
universal thumps with toothpicks. Fear no blessing wounds
in heaven’s gentle slaking rain.
Single lustrous feather tumbling from branch to branch;
crow become looping, lapping sky mass,
abandoned tree slowly rebounding,
refuge still there in reiki rain.
© Tree Riesener 2004
All rights reserved.
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Birthday
a sijo from LIMINALOG
Not bought from a shop,
gold-wrapped with silvery ribbons,
but stolen from a dangerous place--
a high price paid--
Eve brought her beloved clone
his birthday gift
Adultery
a sijo from LIMINALOG
We all figure out how to be faithful
in our own ways.
Shall I stay chaste in your bed
but make a date with someone else
to try the new flavor of
gin-and-tonic-and-salted-peanut ice cream?
Prayer
a sijo from LIMINALOG
Before I leave for morning prayers,
I tear a few pages from my journal.
Who knows if I will return
from such a dread-filled confrontation.
Sometimes God nails you
before you get to the part about confessing your sins.
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