When God Wakes Up Inside You

 

you’ll lift your head like a sun-

flower in a field where the drops

of dew have risen to the tips

of every blade of grass.  You’ll be

a bead of iridescence

ready to be taken up in the air.

 

On the day God turns to you

those dark forest eyes,

you’ll find yourself in a theater

watching an opera of your life,

standing up and yelling,

                        I thought it was a tragedy!

            I thought it was a tragedy!

 

And when She comes from her bath

perfumed and newly-robed do you

think you’ll ever get that grin off your face?

And when Her robe falls to the floor

(did I say, Hers?  Did I mean His?)

                           O dichosa ventura!

 

The rest of the day, the rest of your life, you’ll see

those eyes everywhere,

looking into the architectures

 

of light.  Then only dancing

will make sense,

breathing Her breath,

His, until you find yourself

looking out the irises

of everyone else’s eyes.

 

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Aidan Looks at the Moon

 

After the bugling of elk,

dinner by the wood stove,

we turned in, slept until midnight,

when you woke crying, inconsolable.  So I

carried you out of the cabin,

across the porch, where September

poured over us

with fragrance of sage

and you were hushed.

 

In the moon-lacquered dark

aspens quaked with owls,

and I looked at you

awake in my arms,

five-months old,

eyes like pearls

staring at the moon—

that lantern lighting

this field and continent—

 

your first time to look at

the famous orb

that lit the plains of Troy,

the face implored by Sappho and Sidney,

that Li Po leapt for, drunk

and drowning, crone of Whitman,

Hecate to Plath.

O  Ariel, O huntress,

light this boy’s nights

when he hikes these mountains

or comes home late from cards

or loving, illuminate his honey-moon

and housewarming,

and when he grows past

all my wanderings,

soften his sleepless nights,

as you have mine,

when I walk the house

in the dark

and find you in a window,

reminding me again that beyond

whatever carapace

of longing or fear

I’ve wrapped around myself,

something calls to me

from a home where the elk

steps in the river.

 

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That Drink

 

More and more things

kindle inside,

incandesce.

 

More and more edges

soften, thin,

until all the transoms open

 

and you see how things

are sunk and set in light.

Then the heart

 

finds its mate

everywhere.

There are streams

 

where we are going.

Whenever the water bottle

goes in the water

 

it always comes out full.

I tell you, pretty soon, that which is inside

and that which is outside

are going to have that drink

they penciled in

a million years ago.

 

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My Beloved’s Eyes

 

When You first came to me,

and I looked into Your eyes,

I died,

as Moses said I would

and did not die.  I

wept.

 

As the sun pulls the apple blossom

inside out,

Your eyes drew

me.

 

I became Whitman’s

spider, Kabir’s dolphin,

Augustine’s circle.

 

The fact that Your eyes are dark

with the dust of galaxies

wholly undoes me,

and I see that that undoing

is what we long for and turn

from in anyone’s eyes—

as on that hung-over morning

walking the streets of Atlanta,

looking for Garcia Lorca,

when I caught the blues of an army vet

with a Colt 45

on the fire escape steps.

 

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