In darkness I move around my house
as a blind man might, touching
the walls, the furniture, small objects,
my own body. But this is not
blindness, this is darkness. A sheath
protects us from what is merciful.
On the kitchen counter, white peaches
plush in their basket of moonlight.
I must have bought them
but I can’t remember where or when.
Little moons, come sing to me:
even gently, while winter surrounds
the blood’s church, its brutal
angel. Let time be a music, a larger love
within snow’s high architecture,
the saline cloth of prayerlight’s city
voice. Fawns left almost beautiful
in blood-time mean something:
smallest dream, father-touch; meat-
touch, a glass sound. Faith
scars this god-field, friend, outside
memory (and other perfect waters).
Every being shares its gravity with us,
its cold ticking, the body a soul
sewn into day’s garment of lidless eyes.
Once you heard a green music.
Did you reach out, then, salt-father?
Did you warm these globes
with your bare hand? As I
warm them now, severed against
all their radiant half-lives.
The pale flesh ripening, a velvet myth
in the register of ash, the treble
clef of ash. I am allowed to taste
each liquid rest exactly once.
Be matchgirl to my vagile orchard,
blind winter’s compact gland
adrift in frost. How I succor love:
unribbed, as a third hand or balance—
the stone concealed in flesh,
its dim refulgence, a possession
I open my veins to, in regal splendor.