Be Not Afraid

be not afraid

listen carefully

these are the rules

and yes, it is sometimes a game,

with eyes that won’t see perfection,

with questions easy to answer with language 

that doesn’t need to be deciphered.

there are rules for gravity

and antidotes for rules through imagination,

like believing stars are crabs and bears and hunters 

tattooed on night-black canvas.

every heartbeat carries stories

full with fears and joys

and epic tales of not knowing,

held with a Grace 

that makes room 

for simple awkward peace

to promise salvation 

or the will to ask, “what’s next?”

there are flaws, when fixed,

that still don’t equal love—

but let cupid throw the dart anyway

and see what sticks.

lean in and listen close

the next thought will always come.

what accumulates between us

are castles made of sand,

achievements that borrow 

from our dreams of love.

yet no season of doubt lasts forever.

for there is the audacity 

that every cranium

holds wildness and wonder—

prompting me to opt to dance 

and dodge a personal apocalypse.

ease into the vast relief

that time today is the beginning and the end

completely at ease with itself.

so be not afraid — 

there are angels of mercy in abundance

who also double as doulas of death.

—Ed Sancious

Rio Grande

I’ve been to the border

I’m here to report back

I’ve brought you echoed calling canyon wrens,

the fragrance of wet clay and tacos cooking in a fire

across the Rio Grande by a Spanish-talking mother.

I gallop to you in a message of wild palominos

who strike a wall of spray under each hoof fall.

Make plans.

We’ll meet inside a canyon 457 meters grand,

where cactus cling and lechugilla daggers reach

their spiny hands and sneaky winds whistle songs 

through giant reeds of grass of Mexico, America.

We’ll soak in American hot spring boil.

Fleshy white of legs burns red like soil. 

When we’re done, the timer’s off,

we’ll waddle, flinching over river pebbles

into Mexico, in cooling river flow.

Occasionally, the world will visit 

in halts of English from a couple from Japan

in songs of men from Belgium

and over here a delicious bit of elder Russian.

It all comes to visit in these waters

Rest and mingle

in an endless flow of water.

Once refreshed, we all return to where we came from, 

muddied, cut and sweating.

Or maybe we cross to new beginnings.

It’s what Rio wants to show us

in a 30-foot span across a Rio Grande,

where roadrunners steal a sip of water,

where flies grow fat and drunk

on mesquite honeyed sap,

where the cruel sun warms then burns you,

where the shade and wind offers generous relief.

These are the things I had to tell you.

These are the things I had to bring you.

Before you took another breath today. 

—Emily Romano

This is What It Sounds Like

Footsteps crunch down winter’s dead, gray grass

Mourning dove wings whistle flight, alarm

These grey-necked birds with blushing breasts 

balance on a rickety fence, turn one black eye.

Invaders advance, take what has died, kill what still lives. 

The doves take flight.

There is something in that crunch they know,

a sound that slams all doors and hearts.

It hammers hard.

They’ve spent the day in flight, these doves

from tree to tree, house to house.

They’ve sat in nests, they’ve hunted specks of bugs and seeds.

Wobble in a maze of city streets and long, tall grasses.

They watch and wait.

A freeze descends,

a freeze that grins and rips the chest wide open.

This is a chill that loves a feast, 

a chill that nibbles first then hacks its arms,

then chokes and vomits on its tail.

This chew, this gnaw,

these sounds hiss, hurry away.

The boot-stepped weight that crushes leaves and blades,

the howl of dog, the wheels that groan along cement,

the distant pops of guns,

the clink and hiss, the metal canisters of gas.

Since start of light, a dove must stay alive.

From dinosaur claw, to small ball of fluff, 

egg to egg, 

sun to sun

dusk to dusk.

Alarm’s vocabulary assembled

in push of suns, in waxing, waning moons.

Today its time.

We lurch our eyes to monster’s ram on door, tackled body to a ground. 

A gentle dove must pull the air and sing with wings

an honest song: I am afraid, I don’t want to die, I have to flee.

A calculus of centuries fires circuits in a brain.

A dove does, what doves do.

Its fluttering flights sing a little while it flees.

A Prince once sang

This is what it sounds like when the doves cry

He could have sang about the color of his skin,

about the badge and guns on fat men’s hips.

But no, he sang about the sound, 

the stirring wings, the cooing songs, 

a world that’s so cold, 

the sound of fear, 

the wretched flight. 

To that Prince I raise a glass 

I hear the clinking swirl of ice

I swallow the bitter liquid

I place the frosted cup down

I move with the crowd towards the light.

—Emily Romano, AuD

Holding Hands

This morning I joined my nephew and our neighbor Dee on the grass between our houses. We were glad to be outside in the sunshine after the ice storms. Dee told me what had been happening—my nephew already knew, but all I’d heard was a cryptic note my daughter read me from Facebook: “Back from the hospital, waiting test results.” While the rest of us had hunkered down inside our houses, grateful that the electricity had held, Dee and Tom had been negotiating the highway from Cedar Park and our long country road over packed sleet and then packed ice.

Bad weather was predicted, but it hadn’t hit yet when it all started. Tom felt odd after a game of pickleball at the Y and sat down on a bench. He said, “Call 9901” just before the alert system in his heart shocked him and a moment later shocked him again and he lost consciousness. The ambulance took him straight to the hospital in Cedar Park and tests and retests and arguments between doctors. How much could his kidneys take if they did this procedure? What about that one? Then it was back and forth for more testing over the ice between hospital and hotel. 

The man minding the hospital parking lot explained to Dee at length about driving on ice, protective and grandfatherly, but he cared, was doing what he could for people already stressed and low on sleep and worried. He gave them the same overprotective advice the next night when they left for home, but she didn’t mind. And perhaps it was needed—as they stopped at the light at 281 and 29 in Burnet a big pickup blew past them through the red light and fishtailed half a block before speeding on.

A few hours after our conversation, my nephew came over and fixed my faucet leaks. While he was struggling with the plumbing I baked cookies that I’d saved in the freezer. He beamed. A wrench and some cookies and grandfatherly advice, none of it can change the realities of change and loss, but we don’t have to face them alone.

—Sarah Webb