Wendy Carlisle

The Widow Passes The Church of the Burning Heart,
I-30, Benton, Arkansas

Driving by the strip mall with its holy tenants,
she checks the sky for an explanation.   

No fiery host. No apocalyptic flame. 
Just the chapel, the Dollar Store and Halloween’s 

pumpkin, its dumb mouth mimicking heartache. 
He was on the two-lane when his body blazed away 

and left his Harley blinking.  A little further
down the road he would have seen this shopping center,   

might have been its parishioner, left her for good later,
kept rolling to Little Rock where each Road Runner 

is a natural theology lesson between the house and the cemetery
on that interstate where his burning heart might not  

have worn him out so soon, rising like any sun from tree to tree
beating as hard as it always had against gravity. 

Enough Nature for Today
(Terry Wright)