When the miracle happened it was not
with bright light or fire—
but a farm door with the thick smell of sheep
and a wind tugging at the shutters.
There was no sign the world had changed for ever
or that God had taken place;
just a child crying softly in a corner,
and the door open, for those who came to find.
In 2020 the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn . . . the closest
since 1623 and the closest observable since 1226! —Earth News
It’s a question of control, or should I say
the lack of it in this fractured fear-filled
world that draws me each free afternoon
to focus on a wooden puzzle, solid, tactile,
tangible, and for an hour piece together
all that has been torn asunder, city, sunset,
ocean, forest, to play at being the hand of
God, as if in prayer, a sacred act to gather
up the scattered fragments, and reconnect,
make whole again.
After teaching a class in a large, white tent
for several weeks, one morning I noticed
a sign affixed to the flapping eaves: EXIT.
The thing is, this was an open-sided tent,
with no walls. We could look out on the spreading lawn
in every direction, come and go wherever we liked.
Yet there was the sign, proclaiming the one
and narrow way. Au contraire, I wanted to say.
The nearest exit is all around you.
for Padmaja Pullagura
There’s Holy Communion tonight, so
my mother washes her body since she
should her soul’s there she goes, but
as per vastu our washroom was built
outside, stained today with our dirt,
slippery with grime, and cobwebbed
corners, stinks of dead lizards, off the
ant-line crevices, she reminds me again
and again that a new one inside outs the
vulnerable old one, where the foul beings
shared our days slithering inside, coiling
around those rusting faucets of our privacy
I would have 30 seconds of his day,
maybe 45 because of our exchange.
His brief glance at my driver’s license
showed him I live on the street
where his parents once owned a restaurant.
The place had a fire, he said,
and they sold it.
How are they, I inquired.
He didn’t know;
they are estranged from him.
I wished him a good day
then walked away,
my words dissolving
into the airport crush.
He remained to scrutinize other licenses,
some peaceful names:
Pine Road, Spruce Street, Poplar Place.
Let me see the wick of wing, white moons
surrounded
by blue-violet halos, etching
the black. Let me remember
it is also not that. Let me be
the compound eye
which slivers
the ultraviolet spectrum,
populates the invisible
we call hope, which is also
not that. When will you come, Lord?
We have asked over the ages, over