AMBIGUOUS SOLACE

I keep all my shafts of light loosely wrapped
in tissue paper, dust motes swirling perpetually
in beams through cracked shingles on the shed

roof as we took turns urging invisible steeds
to new adventures, towards friends in town,
exchanging reins behind the empty tongue

of the manure spreader parked for decades,
just in case, beyond the barn and vineyard
canes waving at all time gone by before us.

Or through the stained glass high above
the carved oak pulpit in the adobe chapel
where I heard the call as a tiny particle

washed and floating in God’s eye, yet soon
forsaken once outside perfection. Or just before
she died, the pastel heavens streaking through

February clouds gathered before the dawn
upon the whole Kaweah watershed as folds
in her bedclothes—loosely wrapped and close

for times like this, saved to stave the hateful
rhetoric of prejudice and fears—as my ambiguous
solace from the obvious on election years.