STARDUST
I don’t like it when scientists call me a carbon-based life form
it makes me sound like a pencil smudge on my writing finger
a really bad child at Christmas
clumps left on the oven floor when an apple pie runs over
a suspect’s fingerprint
coal a million years from diamonds
an accidental piano key
mascara tears
a Goth kid’s hammer-smashed fingernails
an Ash Wednesday forehead every day
the leftover eyes of a slumped jack-o’-lantern
a snow pile in a Cleveland parking lot late March
a hurried tattoo
bathroom graffiti
an orphaned chimney sweep
a heap of autumn leaves, colors all burned to ash
—from Rattle #45, Fall 2014
Tribute to Poets of Faith
__________
Colette Tennant: “I am a professing Christian, an imperfect but forgiven lover of Jesus, the dearest bread, the sweetest wine. I can find the Garden of Eden story in almost any piece of literature I teach. I like quoting what Francis Schaeffer replied when someone asked him what he would say if he had one hour to tell them about his faith. Schaeffer replied, ‘I’d listen for 59 minutes and talk for one.’”
