Monthly Archives: September 2016

Liturgy

As infants we nursed
at the breast of the Holy Mother
Our bellies full and hot,
voices loosed:
Those songs that only children sing
Brother, do not lament
Sister,
the passing of a moment
Those garments do not fit us now
as we
Psalmists in exile
not yet Kings
make complex the stirring wind
invisible but not absent
When the morning diffuses
and the fire fades
Rhythm but not Dancing
Pitch but not Song
The motions will compose a liturgy
to narrate our hunger
and our loss
To celebrate our being together
for we are born priceless pearls
lost in fields of swaying stalks
in and out as the force
of some unbidden and exquisite breath
paints her ephemeral eternal opus
in delicate sweeps between and
through the ancient broken stones.

Invitation from a small red bird

If you focus on the layer behind
Or the moment that might be
I am invisible

If you forget your own awkward
First steps or the patient and
Interminable labor
That allowed your fluid dance
Through bone and will and breath
I am not perceived

When I flock I am the sky

When I go glancing off the wind
And mount a high
And slender perch
You likely not have noticed
How far my eye anticipates and how
Precise, my grasp and my descent

You oft lament
That beauty be so sparse
Though vast and plentiful the sand
Some grain too rarely finds its
Way inside a
Secret living chest
Perhaps my wings and quickness
Might be trapped like this
In corners deep and hidden
If pearls are grown
From grains of sand
By creatures dull and simple

Then quickly
Grasp my colors!

And ruminate on every motion
That I show
Each song my tongue rings out aloud
And patiently allow
Each thought, each memory, those
Conscious and those
Dreamed, to grow
To add in layers
Luminance

And if like mollusk locket you persist in this
Then though I fly and nest
Away from thee
Yet in your heart I shall reside
Our eyes exchange
The knowledge of a secret love
Tame pearl once wild,
but now so very near.