Winter Solstice - The Cathedral, a poem from my chapbook

Winter Solstice - The Cathedral

It is the year's dark, when memories
arrive, opening to swarms
of swallows above ancient fields,
vines strung among the corn, sheep
belling an ancient Roman bath.

Dry sun anoints a pear tree,
my father's last denizen
which new owners soon will fell.

It is the year's dark.

From the dome, a turquoise
eye regards us. Our famil's spire
has crumpled, heaving up
ghosts who flit here like shy bats.

There's my uncle, impish and cancer-ridden.
Our tiny aunt in blue pillbox--her daughters
soon will join her, sending spirals
of laughter to incite the higher-ups.

My mother's dog who stopped
her demented barking--
poor beast, she went gladly
to the earth, mound

of collar and bone,
reminder of the exoskeletons
we once were.

My two grandmothers, with tiny wings,
flutter eagerly toward higher warmth,
while their husbands, below, still swirl
in necessary lubricant,

becoming ready to glide
toward the celestial realm,
this haven for lost souls,
half-living, half-returned

through the shill,
darkening air.

(From The Heart Beat of Wings, copyright 2017, Red Bird Chapbooks)