It’s N-scale trains these days, delight du jour
As I drive up the hill and think I can
And think I can switch tracks to turn him toward
What happens in first grade apart from recess,
But no, although he joins me willingly
On errands, reaches up instinctively
In parking lots, at corners, takes my hand
While scanning the horizon for a sign
Of toy stores or construction vehicles,
Then tells me in a confidential tone
That Santa Claus is real, he knows because
This is the place they made the creeds.
Which I suppose is like the place
they split the atom. Light from light,
true God from true God,
hydrogen and helium
both begotten, not made.
I feel like there should be a crater
in this old Byzantine clay,
but there are only pigeons
roosting in the bougainvillea. A trio
of grey wings among the leaves,
dusty and mottled until they split the sun,
are iridescent underneath the dust.
safe in the swamp,
tilting on reeds,
wavy water shivers with song,
air shimmers
sliced by flight of yellow and red chevrons
he perches on last year’s cattails
sings to the dowdy lady, hidden
singing her lies
she loves lies
he has secrets
she warms their secrets
Spring bursts, explodes in spangles
what do they know
care
that winter always comes
what do they care
they are young, alive
feathered, flying
and he, singing lyrical lies.
We don’t choose what we believe in. Toddlers sing-song
you can’t see me, you can’t see me, even though
they’ve only closed their eyes. You know the soul
by how it wakes inside you when you’re looking
in a mirror and you see yourself see you. This strange
unrecognition felt before you learn the difference
between mind and brain, that science can’t locate
the part of us that knows its knowing. There must be days
In their beaks they carry the chaos of the world,
odd strings, twigs and feathers, scrip-scraps,
the two of them all week weave together
on our front porch until, nimble and tough,
their architecture balances on our red shutter
and she tries it out for a day like a woman
nesting a hat on her head this way, then that,
flitting up, floating down, before she settles
wholly into it and sits, her shiny black eyes
When a cloud
becomes a ragdoll or a sheep,
the Madonna’s face, a sidelong
glance, rainmaker in April,
ice-truck in December,
it is forced to reconsider itself,
a theatre of strangers
with quiet footfalls and masks
that flicker like candles,
a foreign radiance
speaking in tongues.
All it knew,
or thought it knew,
was foolishness,
a circus with no clowns,
a bundle of immaculate secrets,
the whisper of moths’ wings
caught between a cabbage
and the sun.
Even the wrists and necks
of the no longer
young whose spring has
drifted with the gold
and green, even the ever
odd-angled bodies,
all coarse, brown,
stick-spined, whose knobs
and joints jut in cancerous
fashion; even these cherry
trees weeping for the summer
of fruit and flowers—
the clouds have clothed
all, clasped baubles round
rough wrists, crowned every
branch with clean, clear
away the stone
sealed with
wax and guarded
by a pair
of rome’s finest,
rolled it away far
far far away
from His
tomb’s mouth
it rolled and
rolled and rolled
away over and
over until it
covered over for
-ever and ever
the Hole in
My Heart left by
simeon’s sword
In the quiet of the stone tomb,
Knitting himself back together
Eyes, hands, heart, lungs
Was healing like a nap?
Did it hurt? To come from
The heated noise of harrowing hell
Now breathing in the dark
gritty air that tasted like joy
This time He gave up on parables,
And settled for the direct:
Meet me in Galilee.
Feed my sheep.
Do you love me?
That second birth was at least private,
Rather than that other dark night,
that poor girl, that sky
wild with angels.
ative reciprocals
abound and re-
dound in
of by through
around under and
out of
My Son’s Life,
like the sad
sad story of
His Best olde
ex-friend judas
who went
into the
potter’s field, fit
for a
plotter’s grave
while on the re-
bound My Son
went into
a Potter’s Grave
fit for
the Potter Himself