The ram’s horn bellowed.
Fused with snapped spears and hatchet heads
nicked shields covered the field,
Poetry
that light kept me a year in its grip first
my feet caught fire then my blood
we moved at the edge of endlessness
headless handless mouthless mind-
To you who are lost today
like a needle in a haystack, reading this poem alone.
Alone, brother island, sister moon. The ocean is big,
A grace of green, the underleaf
of olive, the birdsong’s
cradling. It’s as though
How the earth now
struggles into spring.
How the cold hangs on,
each morning cracking to begin.
Violet, whispered Eve, because
saying the names aloud
made the act too real. Pansy
and woodruff, the flowers so small
Who am I to cast light upon the human soul?
Sitting down to write peace-verses for mercenary gain,
Hunting for poems and hoping against hope that I need not
Imperfection is the place where the spirit enters,
the small hole in your shirt, the loosening threads
of carpet, the ache in your soul for forgiveness.
She consoles me as I meditate
before Mass—Julian of Norwich,
that is, who says, “We are clothed,
wrapped in the goodness of God.”
And she consoles me after Mass
when I drive home to the friary and
pass two prostitutes who are sitting
on folding chairs next to the curb
helping each other with makeup.
Praise God for all things green
Lime jello, blades of grass, emeralds
Chameleons, the neon river frog
Heavy papayas begging to be picked
I expect the whitest dove,
purity as the Spirit breaks apart
firm blue of our ceilinged sky,
a tapered shape, an elegance.
But Picasso was right.
She spoke softly, calmly recounting
her pain through a furnace of litanies
that helped her hold on to the unbelief
Confess to ignorance
I do not know you, although
I have loved you twenty years
The lifting of your lashes
Like the iris
in the side yard,
I have stopped blooming.
Dig me up, O Spirit,
and split me; where I have grown
calloused, break me open;
I cannot tell you why
I taste death;
the cupboards
are reasonably
arranged,
the windows clean as rain.
while climbing towards
phantasmal blue
has broken—
we lie on concrete,
begging with a
shattered golden bowl.
My breath pluming white into December
could, to God, be incense rising out
of the puffing thurible of my body.
Up here, it’s impossible to tell for the fog