What Wordless Hymn

Clouds pass, the sky softens, and the blue light of which we are composed prays on us. Quartz in the old garden glitters, shredded taffeta taken for violets flutters in soft breezes. What old turtle shell encompasses us? What wordless hymn?

One kneels to trace the heart-shaped deer print and loses track of time. Letters move mysteriously beneath our pen, sometimes glancing shyly up. Veils shift - translucence beckons - and what goes on does so happily. Jesus in fir trees and the Buddha a slip of birch bark.

What is vast is within us is vast indeed! Stairs ascending through clouds trailing off. When she closed the door and lit the candle, the poems were there, and she drifted with them in all directions, grateful and amazed at once. Our bodies settling in a dream of cattail.

An afternoon given to watching mourning doves and pondering - again - what to do about money. Day old cookies scattered in crumbs beneath the dogwood as yet not flowering. One can use the word "crow" too much, especially when thinking about cradles and callings. The blessing is what we say it is, albeit at a level with which most of us are not familiar.

Out of the dense matter of bodies come ethics and dreams and ghazals. The way you look at me before we kiss, and what we are all doing with hunger. A quart wine bottle discovered intact awaits the first of hundreds of pebbles brought to gleaming in the presence of trout bellies. A certain love, a certain sail, and this.