It makes me cry to think, Not that. Whenever I look around I find at least one thing for which this might be said. Isn’t there an exception to every rule? The stars, for instance, and the stone. And from that one, say, Christ, there comes a whole new hope. Yes. That would be nice. It is enough to climb out on my roof and look. I check off names as if it were a roster in my hand. A clipboard of names. A catalogue. The night has always been. And I and you and they have not. Should it find wonder in our faces, too? Shouldn’t she discover which one of us today rises first and shines most like magnitude? Tonight another part of me is dead, and yet the bulk still lives.
new
What Seeking Means
Whole days feel like funerals. Nights come and go. Days too long for recording. I go, and asked the mountain top, Yes? And then it occurs to me. The wind is a thing on a list of things, too. Still, who can feel good facing a new direction, when the old one seems so here, so present? I wrote a thousand stories in the book. The book assumed the characteristics of its writer, and when I looked it wasn’t me. It wasn’t the man who initially put his pen to paper. I called for experts to test the results. And they did. And I asked them, Well? The answers they gave were satisfactory, but just. And just… Tonight, I seek to step out of my house. Seeking is enough. Seeking means this isn’t enough. And just as I am about to die, I ask, What else? And finally the words of a book I used to know by heart come rushing in to fill the waste. This isn’t hell, but paradise…
The First Words Last
Let’s pretend I wrote a book. Let’s pretend you are reading it now. Let’s pretend we were childhood friends. Let’s pretend that sometimes when you dream you dream of me. And there, where we find each other, you ask me finally, Who? And I go on circling and circling. Or I stoop, and when I light, between two talons I hold my food. Later, when you wake and try to retell what you dreamed, I am there. Not as I was but in some new form. A fly scaling the chandelier, a leaf the wind blew inside the house, a noise of engines roaring far away, a loose hair fallen from your head. Hold me, as the blessing says, in the hollow of your hand. For now you will be my god, and I will pray to you. It is your job to listen or turn away. Here are the first words. Here are the last.
One Whose Name Is Writ In Water 