246 Spiritual poems

Two nights ago in the canyon darkness, only the half-moon and stars, only mere men. Prayer, faith, love, existence. We are measured by vastness beyond ourselves. Dark is light. Stone is rising. I don’t know if humankind understands culture: the act of being human is not easy knowledge. With painted wooden sticks and feathers, we journey into the canyon toward stone, a massive presence in midwinter. We stop. Lean into me. The universe sings in quiet meditation. We are wordless: I am in you. Without knowing why culture needs our knowledge, we are one self in the canyon. And the stone wall I lean upon spins me wordless and silent to the reach of stars and to the heavens within. It’s not humankind after all nor is it culture that limits us. It is the vastness we do not enter. It is the stars we do not let own us.

Have you said your sermon this morning? the road it travels is dusty and wide and goes round and round and round the mountain to say it is obvious is to say it is crowded with refugees you and the others on the road no destination in sight you are alive though boring at times and the smell of you is instant nausea you breathe white breath in the early morning air indeed you may have a flair for going round and round with a skip and a jump at the most unexpected moments wasn’t that you on a music box dancing in perfect porcelain? a quake threw you from your shelf but round the mountain you must go suppose for once you went up the mountain? would that be a different direction or just more tiring? would it disturb the order of the ten thousand of ten thousand things? do you care? do you know whose sermon this is? it’s a habit you’ll have for life although things do slow down fall into themselves and leave the world to silence and to aha? gotcha? you’re it for now but it won’t be long before another sucker comes this way and you can hide under the desk with the rest of us : look : sky and sea are an undifferentiated gray even the birds disappear but forecast faith in a word and the osprey is there again hanging head-down in the wind it’s plain that being unsure gives you your daily terror you even lift a prayer for it bells ring and you know it is the buoy off Saunders Reef the red light assures you the buoy is still there that no Debussy bells have come to dismantle your ears you’re safe in being where you are not that you’ve got a warranty for life no matter what the salesman said you signed up for Metaphysics 1 cost a bundle left you high and dry : how dare you take all hope away? well in the first place it crash-landed years ago you’ve been standing there imagining greaves breastplate helmet with plumes the whole she-bang but don’t weep today for what you did then there’s a lot to learn about letting go and you won’t hear a clang of armor when you do in your most invincible day you were a larva underfoot you lived by chance shape-shifting you are a fortunate one without a shell no plane overhead gun to your head you are accidentally free in the full terror of being who you are but tell me now this once and forever have you built your language out of the things you love?

under the gervais st. bridge, our voices domed   like a cathedral. shoulders dipped in sunlight, a baptism of sorts. we came to take pictures. searched for subjects like graffiti on piers, what my mother calls angel     rays in the sky,      that yellowed, humid glint in your eyes. maybe i ran out of film     or my batteries died      because when we finally found our shot, you used your iphone. neither of us have a right to decide what is holy.                       i told you i was almost a catholic baby, a half-lie i wanted to be true if only because i knew     you would be disappointed. there is no glory in either of our doubts: your face when i talked of  prayer, how walking across that bridge  back to your car,             i remembered that what gives a photo life is artificial light.

Beneath all this I’m carving a cathedral of salt. I keep the entrance hidden, no one seems to notice the hours I’m missing  ...    I’ll bring you one night, it’s where I go when I hang up the phone  ... Neither you nor your soul is waiting for me at the end of this, I know that, the salt nearly clear after I chisel out the pews, the see-through altar, the opaque panes of glass that depict the stations of our cross —Here is the day we met, here is the day we remember we met

It was the hornbill that spoke it. In the nothing, becoming nothing, begetting nothing; this is everything. The world is old, the world is new How does the darkness hide? In the nothing, becoming nothing, begetting nothing; this is everything. The world is old, the world is new The sun is no bigger than a crab. In the nothing, becoming nothing, begetting nothing; this is everything. The world is old, the world is new Hot soup is devoured from the edges. In the nothing, becoming nothing, begetting nothing; this is everything. The world is old, the world is new The blood sign is red; burning like fire. In the nothing, becoming nothing, begetting nothing; this is everything. The world is old, the world is new It has no name; silence is its name. In the nothing, becoming nothing, begetting nothing; this is everything. The world is old, the world is new.

And then I began my habit of walking at night to get rid of the strings, witherings. The Lord revealed to me that I am full of birds turned smoke and hook è d strings. I say to the Lord, Lord take a string. I have named it mesas ringed with beeswax wicks, footsteps sowing up my stairs, tambourines in trees. Then a tedious, gruesome miracle unfolds, for the Lord takes the string and what attends it. Walking over a grate there is the sound of the grate. Margarita Mondays mean exactly that. I say, how could I eat? I ate. And how can I sleep? I shake. The Lord says, look at the branches, how they braid over graves. And the Lord says, look at the HandiMart, a bright, ordered box. They have their grief, the people there. Now the tableaus mass color, now the tableaus fall down. I say wet pavement keep on holding me up. Wet pavement hold me up. Now the fetishes crumble, now the meteors cup. The Lord says, I meant of it a blessing. And I say, I made of it a curse. The Lord says, sound of roots, sound of shoots, sound of asphalt, sound of cars. I say, I am walked into deeps. Here are the jewelthreads and throbbings that I need to leave. The Lord says, chomp and be chewed, alleluia. Sever and stitch, alleluia. Exceedingly, the Lord says,bar,barr,barr. I say snowfield? Snowfield? Pi ñ on roasting? Chaparall? The Lord says, is what you want the terrible free? And I say to the Lord, Lord speak. And the Lord says, sound of earth in orbit, its muffled, its four-chambered beat.

A man steps out of sunlight, sunlight that streams like grace, still gaping at blue sky staked across the emptiness of space, into a history where shadows assume a human face. A man slips into silence that began as a cry, still trailing music although reduced to the sigh of an accordion as it folds into its case.

These of living emanate a formidable light, Which is equal to death, and when used Gives increase eternally. What fortifies in separate thought Is not drawn by wind or by man defiled. So whispers the parable of doubleness. As it is necessary not to submit To power which weakens the hidden forms; It is extraordinarily more essential Not to deny welcome to these originating forces When they gather within our heat To give us habitation. The one life must be attempted with the other, That we may embark upon the fiery work For which we were certainly made. What has been separated from the mother, Must again be joined; for we were born of spirit, And to spirit all mortal things return, As it is necessary in the method of earth. So sings the parable of singleness. My comforter does not conceal his face; I have seen appearances that were not marshalled By sleep. Perhaps I am to be stationed At the nets which move through this completing sea. Or I have hunting on my sign. Yet the ground is visible, The center of our seeing. (The houses rest Like sentinels on this hawking star. Two women are bathing near a trestle; Their bodies dress the world in golden birds; The skin of their throats is a dancing flute. . . How alter or change? How properly Find an exact equation? What is flying Anywhere that is more essential to our quest? Even the lake. . . boat walking on its blue streets; Organ of thunder muttering in the sky. . . A tiger Standing on the edge of a plowed field. . . What is necessary? What is inseparable to know? The children seek silvery-pretty caves. . . What are we to teach?) The distance is not great To worlds of magnificent joy or nowhere.

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice, And thereupon imagination and heart were driven So wild that every casual thought of that and this Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago; And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason, Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro, Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken, Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken By the injustice of the skies for punishment?

Near the end of my searching I came to a door. Entering, I found the story of her life, laid out like a cake on an ebony table, as if waiting there for the lost bride—pages flat and placid, blank as a lake asleep in winter. Hoping for answers, some knowledge of her, perhaps—I’m not sure what— I placed my palm upon the surface. It sank through and disappeared beneath a cloud of snowy powder.