Three Poems

The Turning

Just then, when already he’s trying
               to leave, improbably

             young and fair-
complected, the absence of pigment a kind

of disease - he’s come as a last
             concession and the church

             is cold, the other,
the pastor, so palpably wedded to grief he

looks with envy at the fair one, grief’s
             addictive, it will hitch

             a ride on anything -
and that’s when it happens, off-camera,

outside, some parting of the beaten
             sky as relayed

             by the gaffer, and
...