Agnostic's Complaint:  Ice Storm '94, Memphis, Tennessee

                                   --for Jerome Oliva, age one

These trees weep in silence today:
          the limb-wracked tears' diamond gaze
          creeps slowly, cold; a lustering
    unjeweled crack splits the sinewed braid
          of upturned unitary green,

and somewhere far north, beyond gelid mind's
          finite traverse, a small child
          lies infinitely still in a sterile white
    room, its myriad past voices subtly wound
         with bright fluorescent shards of blight.

About these two, what could poet say?
        Or brother?  Or shaman, or priest?
        Nothing, save that trees have wept today,
    save that the world here has whitened in grief,
        nothing, save for the prayer brief
        that might save this one at least.