Why Do I Love You, You Ask (for Jena)
what gathers round us?
somewhere in the small sky there is a bit of unreal
view
laced with such a flaming of colors that
this bit of space becomes in the mind’s formation
the whole sweep of possible views not hemmed in
by some flat horizon.
what gathers around us?
we do not choose love but are given to its appetite…
the sky-image, the small space of flaming colors,
becomes that thing of love we attach ourselves to
so that she is the whole sweep of views not hemmed
in…
and to take that little space away
would collapse the sky itself around us.
we do not question the luster or that section of sky
which gave us that flaming out. Instead, we follow
with our eyes the curled ends
of the multi-chromed
flames and do not question the source.
she only knew she were a small bit of the universe
and had no way to see the stuff which filled the corners
of that sky
above me with a peacock’s display of brilliance
Opening
What of belief?
Stars were corners of windows that gathered dust.
Out of air and a false
dead dawn the belief life made
was slow and diligent inside us against the vagaries
of that daily breath.
Belief.
Choosing to surrender to the possible death of belief
we are challenged to find grace as one is challenged
to see
in the full-flung pageantry of an emperors cloak
the dirty fingers that stitched such stuff as would
cover
a royal beast.
The day swallows the nights tail and is ensnared
in its own trap, perpetually rising and not undoing
the actions
of life that would call its existence a day.
