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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.

Matt and Adam talk about the papacy, the burdens of ministry, and The Two Popes. 

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,

Incitement shows the roots of political fractures that remain.

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