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The light snow started late last night and continued all night long while I slept and could hear it occasionally enter my sleep, where I dreamed my brother was alive again and possessing the beauty of youth, aware that he would be leaving again shortly and that is the lesson of the snow falling and of the seeds of death that are in everything that is born: we are here for a moment of a story that is longer than all of us and few of us remember, the wind is blowing out of someplace we don’t know, and each moment contains rhythms within rhythms, and if you discover some old piece of your own writing, or an old photograph, you may not remember that it was you and even if it was once you, it’s not you now, not this moment that the synapses fire and your hands move to cover your face in a gesture of grief and remembrance.

what will be left after the last fidget spinner’s spun its last spin after the billboards accrue their thick layer of grit masking advertisements for teeth paste & tanqueray gin after the highways are overtaken by invasive forests after the ministers give up their gods & the rabbis their congregations for drink after new men rise to lead us sheep toward our shearing, to make bed sheets from our hair after the high towers have no airplanes to warn away & instead blink purely toward heaven like children with one red eye after phone lines do nothing but cut the sky into sheet music & our phones are just expensive bricks of metal & glass after our cloud of photographs collapses & all memories retreat back into their privatized skulls after the water taps gasp out their final blessing what then? when even the local militias run out of ammunitions when the blast radii have been chalked & the missiles do all they were built to when us jews have given up our state for that much older country of walking & then that even older religion of dirt when all have succumbed to illness inside the church of our gutted pharmacies when the seas eat their cities when the ground splits like a dress when the trash continent in the mid-atlantic at last opens its mouth to spit what will be left after we’ve left i dare not consider it instead dance with me a moment late in this last extinction that you are reading this must be enough

Fighting in mud, we turn to Thee, In these dread times of battle, Lord. To keep us safe, if so may be, From shrapnel, snipers, shell, and sword. But not on us, for we are men Of meaner clay, who fight in clay, but on the Staff, the Upper Ten, Depends the issue of the Day. The staff is working with its brains, While we are sitting in the trench; The Staff the universe ordains (subject to Thee and General French). God help the staff-especially The young ones, many of them sprung From our high aristocracy; Their task is hard, and they are young. O Lord, who mad'st all things to be, And madest some things very good, Please keep the Extra A.D.C. From horrid scenes, and sight of blood. See that his eggs are newly laid, Not tinged as some of them-with green; And let no nasty draughts invade The windows of his Limousine. When he forgets to buy the bread, When there are no more minerals, Preserve his smooth well-oiled head From wrath of caustic Generals. O Lord, who mad'st all things to be, And hatest nothing thou has made, Please keep the Extra A.D.C Out of the sun and in the shade.

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age, God's breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six-days world transposing in an hour, A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear; Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss, Exalted manna, gladness of the best, Heaven in ordinary, man well drest, The milky way, the bird of Paradise, Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, The land of spices; something understood.

And as to the poets — it is those straying in Evil that follow them: Do you not see that they wander about bewildered in every valley? And that they say what they practice not? — Qur’an 26:224–226 The man I confused Allah for speaks into the microphone while the angels on my shoulders chew a mouthful of my hair. I wake up to a severed goat head and look at it hard enough to remember the animal in its entirety, a functional thing. The Saudis have built skyscrapers taller than the mountains in Makkah. This is a sign of the apocalypse; we worry with our backs to each other and look for Isa in the faces of men who appear to spin gold straight from the guttural source. 
I repeat the word mustaqbil like a new prayer; when the dog barks at a brick wall mustaqbil, when anemones collapse back into gothic buds mustaqbil, when I wet my arms to my elbows in the sink mustaqbil. All while Israfil kicks his feet against a stone wall and cleans his trumpet with each utterance. In the village, three men dragged a boy into our orchards and beat him to a pulp. The woman who eloped was strangled and thrown into the river. Pickpockets robbed the mourners at my uncle’s funeral —mustaqbil mustaqbil mustaq— my throat is infected by the thick-tongued promise; each night diluted into its prior belly. I use language to build the gardens I’m destined to be expelled from, each imagined rose rendered true.

My shoulders ache beneath my pack (Lie easier, Cross, upon His back). I march with feet that burn and smart (Tread, Holy Feet, upon my heart). Men shout at me who may not speak (They scourged Thy back and smote Thy cheek). I may not lift a hand to clear My eyes of salty drops that sear. (Then shall my fickle soul forget Thy agony of Bloody Sweat?) My rifle hand is stiff and numb (From Thy pierced palm red rivers come). Lord, Thou didst suffer more for me Than all the hosts of land and sea. So let me render back again This millionth of Thy gift. Amen.

After I turned forty, I received my first 42 millirem dose of X-rays. I heated the machine with my uncupped body, tabled my rib cage to cool shoulders dear as a beloved relative who could no longer see due to intraocular weather in her eyes. Women in an outer room awaited bone scans. Backscatter is 5 microrems or .005 millirems. A dental bitewing X-ray, around 0.5 millirem. Mammogram, 40 to 70. Do not know about bone scans. Annual background radiation is 300, higher if we live on a mesa or often fly. Ozone plus uranium decay, daughters of radon gas. How about our radiogenic thyroids, butterflies shimmering with table-salt iodine? Peonies of  bone marrow spun rails of flesh in a waiting room of  jacquard chairs, of  round mirrors and water lilies, paper hydrangeas, African violets. If  I broke the silence, then I drew the flame of  your sun into my chest. Unshielded, I entered an inner room to don a rose-colored cotton kimono. For a minute, I thought of  flying fish roe and forgot its  Japanese name. What is the risk of carcinogenic harm while estrogen acts on my cells? Coralline of  the radiology room inside my mouth, the clinical air exuded an odor of magnolia powder although no one wore it, a scent riper than radical scavengers of  blackberries. I uttered a prayer of radiolucence then remembered the word,tobiko.

Nature remains faithful by natural light, only. Immeasurable, invisible in the wind. Visible when blades and branches bend. The wind speaks fluent rain. Despite it the rain falls straight. And beyond it abandoned barns defend abandoned men.

I May the Name send its hidden radiance to open the gates of deliverance to His servants—and shine in their hearts, which now are shut in silent darkness. May the great King be moved to act in perfection and righteousness— to open the gates of wisdom for us and waken the love of old, the love of ancient days. ii

Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk. Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks. I ought to start with praise, but praise comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you about the woman whom I taught, in bed, this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form keeps things in order. I hear from her sometimes. Do you? And after love, when I was hungry, I said,Make me something to eat. She yelled, Poof! You’re a casserole!—and laughed so hard she fell out of the bed. Take care of her. Next, confession—the dreary part. At night deer drift from the dark woods and eat my garden. They’re like enormous rats on stilts except, of course, they’re beautiful. But why? What makes them beautiful? I haven’t shot one yet. I might. When I was twelve, I’d ride my bike out to the dump and shoot the rats. It’s hard to kill your rats, our Father. You have to use a hollow point and hit them solidly. A leg is not enough. The rat won’t pause. Yeep! Yeep! it screams, and scrabbles, three-legged, back into the trash, and I would feel a little bad to kill something that wants to live more savagely than I do, even if it’s just a rat. My garden’s vanishing. Perhaps I’ll merely plant more beans, though that might mean more beautiful and hungry deer. Who knows? I’m sorry for the times I’ve driven home past a black, enormous, twilight ridge. Crested with mist, it looked like a giant wave about to break and sweep across the valley, and in my loneliness and fear I’ve thought, O let it come and wash the whole world clean. Forgive me. This is my favorite sin: despair— whose love I celebrate with wine and prayer. Our Father, thank you for all the birds and trees, that nature stuff. I’m grateful for good health, food, air, some laughs, and all the other things I’m grateful that I’ve never had to do without. I have confused myself. I’m glad there’s not a rattrap large enough for deer. While at the zoo last week, I sat and wept when I saw one elephant insert his trunk into another’s ass, pull out a lump, and whip it back and forth impatiently to free the goodies hidden in the lump. I could have let it mean most anything, but I was stunned again at just how little we ask for in our lives.Don’t look! Don’t look! Two young nuns tried to herd their giggling schoolkids away.Line up, they called.Let’s go and watch the monkeys in the monkey house.