Soul Sister (for my late former wife)

Soul Sister

Oh, child of the Irish Channel,
is she who attended Divinity School
known as parochial education
in the haze of liberation theology.
She is a lost lamb who wanders the slums
opening her purse for bums.
She gazes with wonder at every fallen cross
in the neighborhood graveyard.
She saunters angelically through hobo town
upon whose frailty she leaves
the rock of ages in pamphlets.

The bright-eyed moonchild surveys dreamscapes
aglow with love light.
As she walks under a balcony
fate drops a ceramic pot nemesis
inches from her peering eyes
that gaze at death from a stone’s throw.
When the sun melts into dusk
the cookie lady welcomes the children
to her porch with a wizened smile
soft as the vanilla wafers
she puts in the alms plates of their palms.
And the ginger snaps break like her heart
on a lonely street to nowhere
or everywhere that can be imagined
for a reader of tombstones
Overgrown by primroses
Sacred flower to Freya
The Norse Goddess  
Of love and marriage
She tends the yellow cemetery blossoms
To be doubly blessed
By Freya while she lives and breathes
and by Osiris the Egyptian Lord of the dead
for whom she tends this garden of souls
when she joins the choir invisible.