Membrance (Fire)

to Soren, holding a scroll which reads:
It is a sweet savour, an offering made by fire

You want to be known yet
even you cannot secure the clouds
revolving in you, the dizzy pendulum
of light and dark and inbetween.

Wary connoisseur of pain and flavor:
Beauty wounds, you apprehend in it
the nearest tip of an immensity
which will sever you from yourself.

Tempered: as anger flaring from rigidity
yet also in that other sense
of durant strength obtained through flame.

Severe and yet you are undone
by any person’s tears. You taste
in them a river coursing from
some vast interior like your own.
And you are not alone.

Leaning back against the wall, beside
this Holy Altar, Nikes peeking out
from robes of geometric gold: There,

between storms of magma and
the coldest meteors above, Reality
(He of light and seeming darkness)
draws you, infinite and intimate.

Wound in the yellow celestial round
of daily orbits, your serenic smile
brightens the ordinary orrery,

God-breathed-and-breathing-child.

Fire and crystal fuse your soul,
a salt bloom which coaxes savour
into all it touches. Share yourself.

In a world numb with measure,
yours will be the dancing shades,
taste of pomegranite, its mineral skin,

the crook in the divining rod
pointing to water by its brokenness.