For Federico García Lorca

For Federico García Lorca

I found death happily
spinning old cloth
in my father’s basement.

I sat beside him
to embroider the plain vestments
but each stitch
blackened to ash
between my fingers.

His fat, nimble hands
just kept churning
fabric yards over the cold tiles,
though I asked him
to slow.

I was alone in the house.
I had a key.
My father had left
the procession.
Silence.

When the sun finally broke in,
it strengthened my thread
and in the light the garment
was black too, ashen,
my thread yellow.
Death just kept sewing
and in the silence
I began working hard
to catch up.


-published w/ Barnwood International @ http://web.mac.com/tomkoontz/Site_26/Williams.html