The sun rode
like a dude:
He rode the sky—gold capes thrown
by clouds splayed
across his way
pole to pole, high shine smeared by a giant—
who roared:
and out poured
more gold for God! (even more gaudy than God)
Through a tight window, Julian
crouches over a bit of handwork.
Known for going nowhere
she has redefined the words home,
here, prison, exile. Your eye,
single, beholds her face. Her eye
never leaves her needle.
Unlike you, she knows where
she will die. She breathes eats
sleeps a seamless meditation.
Madre della Consolazione by Nikolaos Tzafouris
Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens
After the winter, we long for an aromatic caress of mint,
for the sprig of new mint on a bathroom sill, the tingle
of the soft mint starlight over the blue mint of the sea—
drowned acres of blurred mint under the ocean waves,
watery yards of spearmint and winter mint and catmint,
butter mint and basil mint crushed and brewed in tea bags.
This is how we shall live from now on, days after the war,
grace-filled and simple as a populace without wheat bread
or the daily rations of butter and flour. We are a solo leaf
of a receding sun—star
-lings returning to roost.
Here, the night isn’t a cat
burglar carting away the light
in our bones. It is in fact
the warm warble of God
lulling us into the gentle
deep. The synapse of sinew
between the wing and the wind.
No one lightens the body
by torching the eyes.
Even the savior
surrounded by water
and waves still
made time for a pillow.
Friend, are you listening?
Peace, be still.
Morning will come,
On Panther Creek in the Sierra,
I saw a boulder splashed
with pale green crustose lichen,
merged and matted all across its granite sides,
just the way a sandstone boulder used to be
in a small ravine beside our home.
Then a wildfire poured itself
down that ravine, and the eucalyptus
dripped with flame,
scorching all that lovely lichen.
That was eight years ago,
and the sandstone boulder
shoulders only a ghostly palette,
little outlines of charcoal shadows.
The house was, what—a quarter-mile away
from ours? Elm and green St. Augustine,
two-car mirage. Assortment of machines
built to persuade weeds with blades. And an airplane.
Well, the start of one—a wooden bird
born bones-first and growing, rib by moonward
rib. A pterodactyl skeleton.
A cage to wrap an angel in.
Mend the lodge; mentor the kits.
Understand teeth are the final gateway.
Stalk the whispering flutes of air within common reeds. Kiss an overlooked wonder: webbing.
Relish the numberless psalm formerly known as swim.
Amen the snails.
Tail every floating tendril of glory.
Ha brakha dabra: “The blessing has spoken.”
They sat in the ancient place
of the broken and bombed,