Issue

Phantasms

The Crossroad Tree

Friends are getting old; their children, married.
We’re driving out for nuptials at the lake.
Childless, I feel fraudulent and harried
attending vows we never meant to take.

Fields flow past. A landmark elm appears, broken.
It must have spooked the cows that felt its thump.
In rain and thunder, rabbits rudely woken,
darted from their den of shattered stump.

Last Supper
  — i.m. Vince Murphy

In the house where a father lies dying,
grown-up daughters and sons
have begun surreptitiously grieving
while hospice nurses, like nuns,
murmur their grave observations:
the patient has passed beyond pain,
beyond intransigent passions
and the filial bonds that remain.