A Yuyu Anthology Poem by David Austell : The Judgement Of Innocents

I have a loved friend who tells me

his mother was the architect

of his soul.

When she died,

he slept on the very spot of her deathbed,

on the bare floor since he felt closer to her

during the first days before

she passed into deep heaven;

and he gave her ashes back to the earth

as water bitter as the Salt Sea poured out of his eyes

until he was dry as a bone.

His grief drove him into the wilderness

where he hoped some painted wild man or strange adept

would tell him something of the path she traveled,

and if he would see her again.

When he learned that Herod had killed

the children of David’s Bethlehem

and some of the mothers protecting them

(my niece and her first-born were there),

my friend said,

How could that fox have killed the poor mothers?

I said to him,

There are secret things

in the culture of animals that cannot

be explained.

When my mother died, I held her in my arms

            and closed her slackened mouth,

my heart dry

as baked

bones.

--from David Austell's  forthcoming book length poem, The Tin Man on the biblical Character, Joseph.