had become and what would be.
She said, “I thought just now an owl
flew out of me, an emerald being, a species
of moon.”
And I said, “Sometimes.”
It was so cold we grew afraid of a warmth
that moved in the woods nearby, beginning
to curl toward us like a smile.
So we prayed and the sun came up with not
a single barnyard crowing, not one worried dog.
We ate snow and kissed and thought of dancing.
We knew where we were and that we were
what others would call an escape ecstatic
with grief because we were so few,
because our shadows wore so many
unforgettable strangers.
So there would be warmth and food, and still days
by the river. There would be each other again
and again in the light of a naked
and forgiving room. There would be nameless
secrets that would need nothing but to ask
“Does anyone really survive?”
and keep on asking.
CONNECTIVITY
A huge ball of twine turns to bread
and feeds the five thousand, Jesus unrolling it
and watching the sky for signs.
In the church on the hill someone has lost
the thread
of her devotion while underground
the minotaur sings sadly of a boy
strung out, lost in the maze
of shopping carts and limited offers
and girls undressed, the gold filigree
of youth lying
all about them, worshippers
filing past whatever follows something thin
and pale, amazed, loaves and fishes
and twine if you have it.
Let those who hunger stretch forth
their hands, all right?
Let something come to show
whose world [is this?]
and which thread is more miraculous
than dust.
Bright red. Blue. Something heavy
near your heart as Christ stands
on the hillside of empty baskets, fish-bone trash
and crusts of rye, immense cat’s cradle
above him in the sky.
DIMINISHING RETURNS
A crow sits in the dark, thinking
I’m an owl scouring this field for mice.
Then he thinks, I’m suddenly wise, too:
rem acu tetigisti, brother.
He looks in all his leafy cupboards
for testimonials and diplomas.
Finding none, he says, perhaps
I am an hawk, and he can feel
his beak bend down and a pleasurable
bloodlust fill his mind like gasoline.
Oh, I’m a killer now, I am,
he says to his glinting talons,
but it’s night, I really ought to be
sleeping. So he sleeps. In his dream
he is a melon and a huge blade
severs one half of him from the other.
When he wakes, falling, he is two
blackbirds with one wing each.
THE BODY IN MOTION
Is it true that things return
when they are not the same,
that they wait
till recognition bends
like water around a rock
and we say, oh, it is almost you
whom I touched in the blades
of forest light
naked as you were and have been
always in that room in me where you live
like clear water in a bowl.
And you are not the same, yet
here you are. Clearly the beautiful
spirit clothed in time
persists
and I bow to that, smoothing
its bright leaves and surrender,
its wanting to be known.
KANSAS
A man is standing in a field
at the edge of a town so small
it sometimes forgets itself and goes home
to its pale, lopsided houses and dry,
