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O they are happy and O they are loud!—
although only a saint, I suppose, could hear their singing.
Still, what a packed choir on this pie-shaped
piece of earth surrounded by traffic,
each chorus member craning toward me with
open-mouthed elation. I’ve written poems
about their kind, contemplative and lyrical, years ago.
This morning I want only to say
how glad I am to see them so glad.
Tiger lilies, you are as beautiful as ever,
and I am a year older, impatient as ever
and as hungry for praise. But you’re not interested

(Sarcodes sanguinea)

O snow plant, growing right and sudden
     in the middle of the trail,

O pulp-red flowers, bright as Christmas,
     O saprophytic explosion,

botanical grenade at my feet,
     is this what you do to gain our attention?

I see you near and far in the forest,
     shy to the ground but wanting everyone

to know that winter is leaving
     this bare stage, your pop-up art.

Seated before the woodstove,
bold tongues of fire licking
the glass door, I wonder
what it was like for the first
person to discover she had
the power to subdue the night
by striking two stones together,
sparking tendrils of smoke
to rise from dead twigs, grasses,
watching thin fingers of flame
quicken, flickering,
expanding.

A single lamentation, I’m done?
No, just a different one, to name the rains,

tintinnabulation at the window,
the bent lament of morning’s radiance

refusing to appear at this blue glass
where last night I could reach out, name the stars,

many, many my imaginations.
Where are the pearls you wore in your engagement photo

watching me from the piano as I pass by,
piano you played until the end, even half-blind.

These pearls—the girl who wore them stands right now
beside me, mere seconds, in this prayer-poem.

To the one I love, who played violin
and twirled your hair with gracious angst:
You pried clean off your grip on sin
to sing with far and wide and deep. And lost.

You didn’t realize black and white would blind
you. That Tchaikovsky’s music pours from light
despite vodka and trysts with men to bind
him. You’re either for or against the word of Christ.

after George de la Tour

While Saint Jerome was reading by candlelight
some letter from God knows who or God himself,
judging by the way the consistent script shines
through the transparency of the illuminated paper
and even the red mozzetta bleeds through,
a Bible lay close by, and pen and ink and seal.

While everyone in Rome was sleeping, for once
he found himself not writing or copying, but reading
this letter, brief, you can tell, and again, you can tell,
from the folds creased crisp and dark with handling.

Roomed with solitude and a tablet
while zongzi steams in the rice cooker.
Dragon Boat Festival is the day
after tomorrow, but this is not
about that—

about water races and loyalty.
It’s not about pyramids of rice
or respect for the dead, although
the latter is commendable,
like history.

Rather, here is a white pine desk
and a plastic cup with tea stall tea.
Here’s a window and the sky at dusk.
With a lone bookshelf in the glass,
there’s a poem here.

My writing lamp blinks off whenever it pleases.
Stay with me, little light.
Outside in winter coats, firs stand around.

They lean close to whisper windy chants
and show with apparent parental patience
why Native Americans call them grandfathers.

If such a tree falls in a forest
while other trees bend in the icy wind
and no one is there to hear—

or if only one hand claps (that other
Zen riddle, like a one-penny tip
from a hostile patron)—

No time for modesty when they say
take off your clothes. And here
you dress in the dark, keep eyes
closed making love with your wife.

Every stitch, they say, even the pregnant ones,
even kids. Other side, tack-cloth jeans
shimmied over wet skin faster than a glance.
No tell-tale river trail. This

land full of promise, promise, and naked
you enter. Your life of merit just hen-scratch
in the sand. No longer straight As,

At some medieval point, unicorns signaled incarnation,
making whatever virgin lured one to her lap
some sort of Mary. I had never heard of that,
not through all of undergrad or three years
of divinity school. I’d never witnessed
a preacher employ unicorns as sermon metaphor
or heard such a simile in prayer, embedded
in some liturgy striving towards freshness. 
Instead I learned it in a café, from a book bought
on vacation: Hieronymus Bosch: Between
Heaven and Hell. Art reminds me: we lose