The Light Reactions

Coordinates and lore,
each view fruits

awake to intersecting
shafts of afternoon and wood.

Each berrynode collects its
small sphere full:

attention sweetened

from that pale, brittle
soup the stirred leaves.

A turquoise moss, coral
antlers bob in slow
mating rituals with the sun.

I feel that way, warm
approaching You–

this bright, this
playful and this doomed.

Arise my love, O petalled Yawn
of infant green aflame.

Arise O candle blade,
grass ladder quivering taller
over ground wet mouths.

Desire the rising
tongue and hungry
insects grazing gazing

down earth’s dissolve,
that dark inverted sun.

Silence is the song
the dead would
raise for us, if they had
not already spent
their breath to call
us here.

Nowhere
to step except
through yearning things,
infintimate.

Canopy twitches
moths of light
mirroring trillium.

Hold on
elm column, on

earth as it is
in the heavens.

Amen among and in
terraced mists

with ferns alert as infant
serpents.

Good as we exist.

We drink and taste
the bottom of the sky.

Who stands in
instants understands.

Now flowers no
knowing when it ends.

Is, and is
a: to be, to be

beside, between.

Rehearse this subtle
syllabary, lilt
this weathered tempestry.

Hold on and on,

wind bent
into your palms,

unchangeless.