Between Drifting Clouds

Rain that could yet turn to snow, as if existence itself were subject to divine whim. Beyond the stars, more stars, and beyond them, darkness. So I studied a thousand years and learned nothing but a couple simple hymns, so what? At night, the tent flap makes a rustling sound, the breeze coming and going, and my loneliness deepens accordingly. Venus hangs briefly visible between drifting clouds, and one wonders about the moon, which long ago was a kind of lover, attendant and willing. My subject in those days was movement, perturbations in the whole which could not help but be ecstatic. Broken travel plans became the period at which a certain sentence ends and a new one begins. We swim in the same lake but given darkness can only tell the other is near by how the water ripples at our shoulders. Penumbras, adorations, complines. What is the middle of east and west but everywhere? My prayer is you reading this aloud alone in your neat poustinia, floating in me in precisely the way the unfaithful believe is impossible because of space, time, distance and mass. Our mouths full of amen and alleluia, our hands baking bread to feed the poor.