IDIOMS IN THE AFTERNOON

You could be anywhere:

a pizza parlor, a tiki lounge.

Better yet, let’s make it a graveyard. 

A picnic. 

Fish tacos and chardonnay

among tombstones.

In passing

someone in your posse says:

…perish the thought.

Wait, what?

What kind of thought would it have to be

to invoke its own death?

One you really didn’t want to think?

One that would kill a part of you, perhaps?

Perish the thought!

A seagull dive-bombs a hawk overhead.

What if perish were parish instead?

What if the thought was infused with a life

that deserved its own cultivation,

its own church, priest and congregation?

What then?

Suddenly, the sculpted presence

of an eavesdropping angel

catches your attention.

She, like you, is caught in contemplation,

atop her tombstone,

with eyes lifted from the book she’s been reading

for a very long time…

What idiom, what grave curiosity

has captured her imagination, you wonder?