I
Six candles gutter on a high altar for no reason at all.
In this clitoridian world only confession of ignorance
excites the light.
It is the perfect act of one determined to sing
in the o of not, o how good to let go
the bunched-up knickknacks of an acquiring life
and to zigzag naked between lightning bolts
in the faint hope of arresting a fleeting glance.
Everything runs on the dead
and the only reliable fuel is what we have yet to learn.
That's what reflections have to tell us
informed as they are by what's in back of them.
We're bathed in light our own,
entangled in each other's dreams,
glistening in ancient thought
and are the dew drops and berries of comic briar
— hardly whom we say we are.
II
You wear lead socks and hat where no hat is,
left by your soul in an attic to rock
in a dusty shaft of light.
Children disturb your sleep
and don't hear you when you warn them
families are the trouble they've gotten into
and souls are djinn you must let go
if they're to do you any favors.
For all your running around, all your mischief,
this is your home in this shaft of light,
merciless light, pitiless light,
waiting for that one child to pick you up
and sit with you by an inlet of the sea,
a certain inlet she can't find
without you.
Without You