What I Should Have Done


I should have cut a hole in the ceiling
to let my prayers out, words
like smoke from incense pots,
unable to rise above that bloody altar.
Look: here is where you should have slept,
your ear only an inch above my heart.
See: this field of stars above the watchtower
that we might have counted, bye and bye.
Now the sky is full of dark matter,
and though I were rich as Herod,
the baby-killer of Bethlehem
(who was richer than Caesar), I can
not get you back, even though
I would rub salt upon your infant body
and powder you with mustard seeds,
and wrap you up with swaddling bands
embroidered with your genealogies.
Here is the singing bird I'd give you,
the pony, here the toy soldiers,
their cannons in flames.
Here angels play, out of sight
lest they terrify us, though we lie
prostrate, trembling on the ground,
we eaters of entrails, we breakers of bones.
The first to bring an offering
and the first to be offered,
like a burning ram, I continue
to follow your lead
like Nahshon followed Moses, loving him
too much, walking out before him into the sea,
walking out until the water was
all the way up to his nose
before the sea finally parted.

.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

THE FORGETTING

"Our birth
is but a sleep
and a forgetting."

--William Wordsworth

I am
before my mother carried me,
tethered me to earth
with a silver cord,
before I flew prayer feathers
at my Father's knee,
there, where a million moons roll
like black-glass marbles
into the curved valleys of space
before I ever dreamed of earth,
or things of earth: fish
or rocks or bread,
before the luminous waters
of my birth washed me clean,
I am
I always am