Neither Church Nor Ritual But After

And so at last I find my knees, as one dark morning I would have to. Moon a smear of light behind unmoving rain clouds, the dog rustling where recently a skunk passed. We incline to declarations and we long for secret letters yet happiness is hardly so contingent.

Thus this, again. The sentences toppling from caves like unpolished crystals into whatever hands receive them. What is interior has no dimensions and welcomes us accordingly.

Certain women are easier to write for than others. Sacred is neither church nor ritual but after, walking with you, and learning together the names of trees without worrying what comes next. Like that but different.

There is a little brook I pass, the bridge across it unsteady and old. Crab apples rot in the tall grass, picked at by crows and jittery deer. How tired I am of longing and yet . . .

She opens and the familiar light shines and so I open too. We have to do something with them, sentences and bodies. As the sea is never silent, not to one who knows how to listen and when.

Thus I await your signal, nearly at the end of my long affair with signs. A little dust rises where I kneel to pray, muttering about mountains and starlight and soft petals not quite hidden. Spirals please me, folds please me, and prisms please me too.

You are that light a little while yet. And this is for you, to accept on terms of your choosing, offered at last without thought of reward.