Because of our Desire

There is nowhere in my mind for blue. A dusk song, a traveling song, a getting away for good song. 

Seams in the light through which darkness streams, pure emptiness, the cave in the heart of the heart. Thriving poinsettias.

Blizzard conditions, everyone shopping accordingly. That moment when the stage darkens.

You can’t hate Judas, you can only see how you are Judas, and then and only then can you begin the long journey to peace. Maple leaves fell once, all in a hurry, as I was in a hurry passing by them, and only now am getting around to writing it.

Borders only exist because of our desire to cross them. Dust on my sandals that for the life of me I can’t shake off.

A letter I cannot write, an envelope I will never seal. In a dream, Emily Dickinson wore a long robe and spoke to me from the shores of a lake, and though I could not hear what she said, the low amber of her voice reached me easily, as familiar as the breath in my lungs.

Of course size matters – everyone knows this! The grief I felt in that Montreal strip club, drinking overpriced beer, sad for the men who were there alone, wondering when if ever it would come to that.

What is so seldom. Widowers who still wear their wedding rings.

A lifetime obsessed with red birds because of the way a woman took her shirt off in an Albany motel when I was twenty-one, can you believe it? How at night you can walk a long time and never arrive anywhere, only end up someplace, no prayer on your tongue, no word in your heart.

Taking it with you. One by one I revisit the old pains, letting them be healed by whatever it is in me now that learns how to heal by healing.