It’s too early,
the body says,
to be up
and considering
brain and soul work,
especially this current
irritating obsession with 
God-work.
The body says

it’s time
to fall
back to agnostic sleep,
to worry
about all that
later; the body says,
“take care of me,” says

it’s time to roll over
and away from the stinging
hymn that’s trying to come out
of mouth or hands
into the growing daylight.

So I turn over and try
to fall back into sleep
though I know 

that the song
will be in there
with me, like a bad
mattress or pillow,
giving me pain
in the place where I keep
my definitions.

If I succeed
in getting more sleep
it’s going to hurt
as much as if
I stay awake wrestling
with it —

God, it all hurts 
all the time. It all
hurts from bruised hip
to cranked neck
and deep into the back
of my dearest names
for myself

but it’s too early 
to think about this;

I don’t want to think about
any of this
until I’m dead but the body
won’t stop saying

“not yet.”

From the window
I can see Pound Hill.  
That’s where God
lived before She moved
to Far Mountain on the
opposite horizon.
She left a ghost 
behind to watch the place
and keep in touch with us.
We go there only
when called,

crossing over
the sacred boundary
called Silver Creek, careful not
to dip more than a toe
or else we have to go
all the way back
and start over.

Once over safely,
it’s a slow walk only,
no running no matter
what God and Her Ghost
show us — and oh, the pain

if we’re not holding flowers
picked from the far meadow,
under the shade
of the Tree.

It’s all worth it
to go through
that and be home
and look out the window
toward Pound Hill
over Silver Creek and know
we went and saw and heard.

Sometimes in Winter
I see the stone church
of my neighbors through
the bare branches,
hear them singing

for a God
they can only imagine.
A God locked
in an impressive heaven
many miles away.
They mention a Holy Land
now and then, its hills,
its rivers, but most 
have never seen it; it’s

so, so sad.

You claim to want
and love nature
Your fantasy of it
seems to be
a longing

to walk in the forest
untroubled by rain
or beasts or bugs
or the inconvenient
mess of wet leaves underfoot

to stroll along the beach
unaffected by the smell
of kelp tossed up earlier
to bake in the sun

to walk a mountain walk
with no stumbling upon loose rock
no thinner air
no need for careful steps or
taking thought for safety

You seem to suppose
the avoidance of
the truth found in nature
is possible and that
as such it’s
less dangerous than
facing it

but the truth
serenely oblivious
to your delusion
as always

will deliver
what it sees fit
to deliver
in its own time
on its own terms

the locked box in your head
is colorless or rather
has no specific color

could be brown right now
might be red right now
is not white right now
is not blue or violet right now
but it might be
next time you look at it

you are fairly certain
you keep the key to the lock
for the box in a pocket
in your other coat or
pants

it is always in
your other coat or pants

you know you must have it 
though you don’t recall 
ever holding it or even
seeing it

you have not
seen the contents in years
decades even 
but you know deep down
what is in there 

you can hear it
knocking at night
sometimes
all night

sometimes all day too

as much as you would like that
to stop you know you would need
the key to open it so you could silence
the knocking and that is not possible
right now

so you shrug and turn away
and cope by tuning your life to the chaos
in the rhythm of the knocking
coming from inside 
the colorless
locked box
in your head

noticing as you do
how every one else around you
seems to be dancing as well
to something they are hearing 
that only they are hearing

A corner lot. An empty
television shell.  
A soaked mattress
that moves around the property
getting darker, more filthy,
yet stubbornly holding itself
intact. Bottles and cans,
trash bags like good intentions
left behind half filled, fast
food wrappers;

birds nonetheless,
leaves nonetheless, flowers 
nonetheless, the dark green shade
in the center nonetheless 
inviting anyone to walk in and stand
under the stressed trees,
a seldom accepted invitation
that nonetheless
makes a difference
to this city by being 
extended in spite of 
so much insult.

I come from a long line 
of people: some
undoubtedly saintly,
some no doubt abundantly evil;
others certainly
ordinary, full up with faults
and virtues and inconsistency.
I am their son. I carry all within.

I live half
shadowed; in the dark of me 
I lament the lack of light;
I turn to the bright side 
only to flee toward shade;

I am their son.

I have sipped true love
and tenderness
from a skull goblet,
crushed that cup
with a single simpering kiss
and scattered the shards
across seared fields; I come from
a warrior line, a massacre line;

I am their son.

Been drunk with joy while standing
outside in between lightning, hair stiff
on every square of my skin as I looked up
into the light and demanded it take me;
just one of a long suicidal line;

I am their son.

I come from a long line of people:
none have been openly magical,
none have floated away to heaven
from the dirt we are born on. None
sought manna, preferring to dig
drought gardens wherever they were
and scrape together a life.  I come from
a long line of plain and hard;
I see them whenever the mirror
decides to surprise me
with a real moment of reflection;  
see them all behind my drooping eyes
and roughed up skin, my crooked teeth,
my spark, my ash, my loss;
this trophy face is all them.

I am their son.