SOULS
There are so many souls worth saving
the face wreathed in roses whose eyes tell tales from
before civilization when trees were sturdy giant ferns cut from
crystal
the grandmother with ten white horses on a steep green hillside
whose middle name is a secret she calls on to heal
the cut finger the burnt tongue the earache the limp
the mental hesitation
the twelve old men from the remote mountain village
all brothers from the same mother and father
all twelve so filled with natural goodness and so
physically alike the townspeople call each one of them
Joseph
So many Lord on this raw earth of sharp ice and
wild flame saw teeth and soft rollers
The shy schoolteacher in the ghetto
who smuggles her paycheck money into various lunchboxes
the girl of six who stands up for the boy in class who peed his
pants
against the taunts of the others
the fireman who hears a cry and suddenly sees
the Celestial City shimmering through columns of flame
and walks through them to his Lord
Lord the cries of endurance and laughter of terror
these human souls You fashion out of
red dust and divine breath on a
mountaintop we may never see
then lay them into wombs and later into
tombs to be assembled before You on that Awesome Day
no cranes cross a bronze sky
no dust mote floats in the still air
And our souls stand out like diamonds on black velvet
like trumpets in a library
10/18
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THE ALCHEMIST
The alchemist sat in his brass chair
and took the ivory figure of a horse and
set it on the tabletop and it
took off at top speed with a vision in its
eyes no man could fathom
He took the ashes of a rose in the palm of his
hand and set them stem first into the
fresh river water in the tall glass vase that moments before was
just a sketch on paper
He took a gulp of air and sat quite still for a
moment in the middle of a dense forest attended by
stags
He drank a potion that was just rainwater
collected in a trumpet flower
and saw a youth dressed in leaves gazing with
love on everything around him appear for a
moment in his mirror held in his hand above the fire
And he leaned back in his brass chair in the
dark laboratory off Moulton Street smelling of
overheated beakers and things dipped in soot
and sighed and the strange pneumatic song of his
sighs became a garden grove especially for
him filled with gardenias and hibiscus flowers brazenly
extolling God in a voice only the actual
air of the sky could adequately hear
though his own eyes filled with
fresh salty tears when he
heard it
11/20
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HE FELL TO HIS KNEES
He fell to his knees
but the buildings came down
The sky filled with vaporous forms on their
knees in the highest silhouette heavens where the
light is most intense and most pure
but the buildings came down
His heart became spiral staircases leading to
Him
wingéd messengers rushing the steps ten at a time
to deliver his pleas
but the buildings came down
Children fell to their knees at the gates as the
Mongols’ horses galloped furiously in
each child gaining years as their
hearts prayed for mothers and grandfathers
but the Mongols invaded
and the entire city came down
all the buildings came down
their prayers with more stirring hooves than the horses
but the buildings came down
their faces dark with a sudden wisdom
but the buildings came down
The violent earthquake threw people to their knees
their prayers stronger than a
million oceans
but the city came down
buildings came crumbling down
their voices rose like iron barricades in the
sky like walls against certain disaster
their eyes focused on heaven their hearts repeated
two or three hammering words over and over
but the buildings came down
they prayed until even their faces crumbled
but the buildings came down
Each trickle of divine compassion poured down
The gorgeous reply more majestic than the
origin of the species more elegant than
the creation of a fern the body’s
ability to heal more perfect than a blood cell
or the eye of vision itself
But the buildings came down
The song of deliverance
came down with the dust
as the buildings came down
God’s Face in the smoke
as the buildings came down
His Word on lips unfathomable to tell
as the buildings came down
The difficult answer coming down with the buildings
As all the buildings
came down
11/26
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LITTLE GOLDEN HANDS
Little golden hands are playing a billion molecular pianos
up and down the scales through phyla flora and fauna of
everything oblivious to time but rhythmically thumping time’s
boat-hull as it crashes through eternity’s breakers
each one higher than the Empire State Building
licking against heaven then
curling down again into the general brine
that sizzles into a momentary silence so long whole
universes bathe for centuries in its stasis and so short the blip
is
hardly experienced by anything but a little
interrupted starlight in some distant corner galaxy that was
already distracted by the gorgeous coming-to-birth of a flaming
red color against a
burgundy cobalt background streaked with mercurial silver
in this universe of concentration and distraction
multiplication and subtraction in which
nothing is ever added to or divided from or shifted
in your smile or glint of eye like creased velvet
like crumpled foil splashed with amber
without those little golden hands playing a
tune so catchy and memorable in the
everyday reality of filthy subway entrances or
soot in the air with a divine face flashing in it for an
instant before falling everywhere at once
over everything in singable and melodious tones
1/28
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THE MOTOR RUNNING
Three drops from the ocean of love fell on the
hem of my shirt
though I could hear its crashing surf far above both the
stars and the liquid daylight
and it crashed on the earth like hands slapping
dough to be made into bread
or like a whisper in a room so silent
everyone can hear
Three drops alone reached me but I’m now
helplessly drunk since the sender of these
drops though coquettish is made real by the
moisture and shape of the drops
one drop for loyalty one drop for eternity and the
last one for death whose car door is always
open and the motor running
4/7
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