The big agaves
died in
the snow,
they have
a touch of blue
in them like
I see in my
face and
sky on a cold day,
in my blue jeans,
in the faces of
those that
leave us,
it would be nice if one of them
had this cowbell
that my grandfather
put on one of the white
cows to find them
in the pines,
that we could hear them,
this little boy that
died from abuse
in an apartment
near me last week,
that he,
the agaves
could come back,
that this bougainvillea that
belonged to
my mother
would bloom
pink again this spring.
Candle
In this long life we live,
in the next one a
nice person will
burn like this
flame in a
white candle,
in a dark world,
in a house of ice
without power it is
a yellow light in a
white skull on the
table made in a high
school woodshop
class and sitting
on a pane of glass,
in Posada’s drawings,
in the white wax with
the blue flowers
on it when it is
10 degrees outside
with snow on the
ground in blue
light when we
know someone
will die in the
night cold and go on,
in this other place
sharing their light
like this small Day
of the Dead candle
that I bought in
the grocery store
because I thought
it was pretty and it
did not cost much money.
Benjamin Nash has had poems accepted in Kestrel, Pembroke Magazine, RHINO, VOLT, and elsewhere.