THE CLOAK OF THE SAINT
1 The cloak of the saint was filled with roses
The cloak of the saint rose above the city
The cloak of the saint was thrown over the back of a chair
it slowly filled with a human form
it was filled with the sound of wind
It floated down the mountainside
sheep it passed turned golden
Rocks glowed in its light as it flowed across their surfaces
It sat at the table of the poor and broke bread
It spoke to a lone man on a rooftop or mountaintop
a lone woman standing by a stream or sink
a child singing to himself in the bath
a child playing by herself in a corner filled with bric-a-brac
Or at sea in a lifeboat where a single sailor lies dying
or a young scholar weeping for joy in a lamplit mosque in the snow
Or over the silent morning where the birds are
just now waking up in the trees
2
The saint's cloak is not made of threads interwoven
but of silences between words and then
words like pearls lifted and suspended in the air between silences
The saint's cloak covers windows and doors
our entrances and exits and all the indecisive or decisive
moments in between
Along rolling green hillsides just as the sun first hits them at dawn
and as the sun pulls its light into darkness at dusk
the cloak unfurls and is not light of sun nor dark of night
and maybe it's closer to starlight in its distant and elegant splendor
though it's as near as the web of skin between
forefinger and thumb or the
raw inner flesh of our eyelids in a biting wind
or in a corridor of mirrors when an eyelash is
caught in them
Or alone on a beach where the cloak rises and
falls with the lull of waves and the
sound of a bell buoy ringing invisibly in the mist
If it were spread out against the sky its
words could be read more easily
Its parchment its scroll-like unrolling across the entire
length and breadth of our lives in its impeccable grammar
its perfect punctuation its start of sentence and
single point final
The saint's cloak drifting neither upward nor downward
but drifting all the same
From one end of us to the other
Through whose fabric towers of ice arise
The living tremor of an uncommon surrender
7/27-28
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MOMENTS AFTER
A wild elephant sits down after its rampage
and dusts its brow with dirt
The dust settles after the building's collapsed to the
ground with everyone inside it
little flakes in universes of their own twirling and
tumbling through the air as if humming to themselves
After initial spews of disgorging flame the lava flow slides
cobra-like humming silently to itself down the hillside into the
valley below with only the crackle and pop of
burnt trees rooftops stalled automobiles
and whatever else is in its way
After the volcanic shout that cleaves the air
the room becomes silent more silent than our
honoring of the dead though not as silent as
the dead themselves
menace replacing chitchat tension replacing gossip
expectation as wide as space itself replacing
the blithe sense of immortality that usually
accompanies all we do
8/12
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TRUE FACES
The butcher conceals wings under his wraparound apron
The policeman is secretly psychic and can
solve all the cases
The jeweler plucks diamond out of his mouth
when no one's looking
The dancer levitates alone in front of the practice room
mirror while slowly pirouetting with long
arms upraised
These silent phenomena these invisible heroes of the Miraculous
The surgeon with actual laser eyes who waits a little
when the others blink to look deeply into the
opened patient to the source
The nurse with divinely guided ears who hears
the cry inside the cry and the moan inside the
silent sufferers and the voice of the comatose
reciting its detailed litany and singing its
circumscribed dreams
Nothing is as it seems
The old crossing guard with the big bosoms and thick
glasses who whispers rosy destinies in eight-year-olds'
ears often without them noticing until
twenty years later one morning at breakfast
The florist who lives in visionary anticipation
sending bouquets to bashful lovers or the
recently bereaved signing their cards with
perfect appropriate signatures
The railroad engineer who entertains angels in the
locomotive cabin on those long nights in blinding blizzards
who tell him when to accelerate around curves
The Chinese shoemaker whose ancestors bring him the
next perfectly cut piece of leather or silk to sew in the
middle of the night for the next morning's
urgent commissions
The abyss opens up in a split second and
releases its evil denizens into the air
The muttering grandmother in the print housedress
gives them a withering glance that
dissolves their wicked intentions forever
The old black gardener in dust overalls who
talks to birds and listens to their sagas and
weeps tears at their aerial travails
This list only indicates a texture often overlooked in God's
impeccable creation
The light inside the listener that sheds on crystal
caverns where the true tablets lie in heaps
each face a decipherable text that tells our most
secret desires and the cures of the deepest
maladies of our deliverance
those individual afflictions which are
each of our safe passages to Paradise once we've
taken each one by the reins and ridden it in
8/28
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KING MIDAS 20/20
King Midas touched one more thing
just to make sure it was happening
Then a pin that suddenly dazzled with starlight and
became gold
A wooden button with its puny threads now
glittering and solid and bound with golden fibers
to the cloth of his coat
Now he dared the coat itself and found himself
encased in soft armor
all its buttons gleaming and the pockets solid shut
and the arms heavy
King Midas watched a ladybug land nearby from the
open window having flown in from the garden and now
flittering its wings the way ladybugs do as if
shaking dust particles off them and neatly arranging them
back under their hard red case
Midas poised his finger above her for one introspective moment
or perhaps out of a twinge of human hesitation then
ping! A golden ladybug hatpin or
doll's ornament encased in golden stasis
Pleased the king looked out the window at the
world its trees and palatial gardens so well-ordered so
clearly and royally geometrical and rubbed his fingertip on the
windowsill that immediately gleamed and
then on the window glass that suddenly became
opaque shutting out that pleasant vista
then tables and chairs and vases and knickknacks
given him by all the world's dignitaries and
already priceless until a
uniform kind of stainless steel glow of golden light shone
everywhere each detail of each item down to the
threads on a screw or the points on the royal pens
until King Midas had no recourse but to
touch himself as well the only one
so far left out of the equation
and he suddenly clunked to a complete and
formidable stop
his blood turned to gold in golden filigree veins
spread like coral throughout his solid body
heart chambers golden lungs golden skeleton a golden tree
his tongue heavily solid in a solid gold mouth
only his eyes remaining alive
seeing all this
9/29
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