Adoration


Perhaps, I am the New World
to you -- Imagine first steps
in what would become
New Netherland in 1609.

Now, or in the past
it had no name. It is/was
without form, and mysterious
and then in morning
vivid and every motion
fresh, vague a half
recollection of obscured past
by an earlier death, --
Maybe you are first being
in paradise complete
with parasol -- Paris, 1881
Pierre Auguste Renoir, a
painting of sunlight --
an intuition rather
than definitive story
written down by prophets –

We are messengers
and you begin to see
through our eyes, yours
mine and the lilacs
of drawn violet in summer
past the lake where we
slept behind the oak
as if we were settlers
explorers and perhaps
spirits with a conscience
who came out of our
hands and lived on beaches
black with obsidian shells.
.

It is all new of course
changed to my perception
of creation called worship.

What have we seen? What
are the pathways when love
rides slowly from our courage
to unsettle the universe, --

More, we say, so much larger
the envelope of life from algae
to the unknowable virtual rings
of light that encircle our ashes.

Yes, love accepts everything
not only pennies but the Fall.

Large words trimmed with ermine
skip between sheets and steel.

Weapons poised force allegiance
No one measures agape or give
laurels for the drowned lives before
we settle again in the next field
and the next beyond next beyond first.

We are carried away beyond sight
to jubilant arch where ceremony --
casual steps follow the steps up
and then down the rocks of the fjord.

Every funeral pyre collects our words
marks the calendar and stains memorial
page with details, commentary
floods from every human life turned out
to climb the last stairway to our bed.

2/12/06