Job’s Tears
by Robert Peake
- Once, I was more than this rosary –
- finger-polished white translucence
- streaked with devotional smoke: I remember
- leaves unfurled like sails, stalks
- bending in damp heat, droplets ripening,
- calcified grief.
- I recall the stillness of children
- hiding in tall grass, mothers
- calling over the wail of crickets, playing
- together and apart.
- I survived everything: the cutting
- away of tenderness, stripped
- for kindling under a summer moon.
- Only the seeds remained, pearls
- of memory polished by wind,
- the hands of the harvester trembling.
