Orphaned into Each Other's Arms

It’s as if you just returned

From somewhere west of the future

And find yourself unpacking books

You haven’t seen in twenty years

Sudden distances appear in the sun-stained room

Global meridians unfold from your open hands

You cleave stubbornly to a hole in the air

With all the rest of your songs even

Without language

It’s okay

There will be singing

Beyond the final dusty hiss

Of human thought

You’ve got them now

Swimming in your stomach

The skinstripped words

You drank from my mouth

The Sound That Woos Your Lips

The sound formed before

Your first breath

The sound of nobody’s voice

You recall so close to your ear

The sound open as a lidless eye

That waits for morning

The sound rolling out of itself

Not shouting but tolling soft alarms

The unasked for sound

The yet-to-be-begotten sound

Never to be forgotten sound

Not the sound of the eruption

But what you hear when ash falls three nights later

Breathe and Be You

Your name

Your name so near and graspable

Your name

Your name unfurled at half-mast

Your name

Your name among wandering stones

Your name

Your name kneeling in the river

Your name

Your name open and void

Your name

Your name unmasted and swinging free

Your name

Your name aslant in the skull socket

Your name

Your name ensilenced in the shroud of rain

Your name your name your name

Blue as your eye beneath a stony lid

When the Ring on Our Finger Awakened

First was the unflamed word

Blanched with annulment

Then the call of sleepdoves

Fell like silenceblossoms

All around us baroquely flamboyant

We too shed petals and everything

Slipped away growing larger and larger but

Invisible enough to see

We saw day’s flowered axe

Unsplit night’s feathered anvil

Right enough we stood

Handfasting beyond sanctity

Listening to the nearswept tumult 

 

White-bearded truth itself

Pelted us with deaf answers

We chewed each name-torn scrap

We swallowed every flash and shadow

Each word that sang us into we

Solving the Riddle of All Your Hopes

Your cathedrals

Your transparent cathedrals

Where nothing waited

Transcendent in the wounded moments

Floating in singular frames of indifference

Transformed into no end of space

Your hours

Your hours breathing

Your hours breathing quietly

Your hours breathing quietly just

Hearable in the chamber of hurricanes

Then came

The impassable word

Shot through with radiant silence

Scooped out of darkness

One breath at a time

One more word like this one

One more mouthful of silence