Sunday, November 7, 2010

Pilgrimage


Climbing clouds like stepping stones and silver fonts
(they cleanse his every step on upward ways tread through the air.)

Homeless, for his home is made in others' hearts
(swiftly taken, every step, towards
the peak of any mountain, the crest of any wave,
the swell of any quiet valley's hill,
there to enlarge his habitat.)

What use for garments, alms, particular things has he
whose eyes tell both the image of his one possession,
which possesses him: a flawless pearl,
its price unasked, held in his breast
(who speaks to God and hears of you, your name that sounds like pearl)?


Friday, November 5, 2010

The Glow the Sun Leaves Behind



To the West, the sun sets and tells me there is nothing I can say
to encompass or reflect its magnitude or the arc of its path
as it falls out of view. Even as these words appear, the globe has gone
and left behind only the glow of still-hot clouds
and the markings of my inky hand,
perhaps the memory of my eyes,
to tell that it was here.

Rising from their distant roots, the yellow mountains form my horizon
and blur into a mist, mingling with the foot of God
so that I cannot say where they are ended or where clouds begin.

The font of an eternal storm, the one cloud overreaching
and welling like a wave longing to drown the world and dissipate
and never run aground gives me a drop and then escapes my windy eyes,
damn the wind! the wind in those great metal sails
that rise, rise, rise into a sky like a withering bloom.