a question on a slip
of paper, maybe the back
of a receipt, maybe written
with the pen at the bottom
of your bag that has been
missing its cap for two months
but is not yet dried up
and you fold it in half, maybe
three times, partly to hide
it and partly to smallen,
and you roll it and hold
it between thumb and index
and you look for god in
the rain taking the ink and leaving
the leaf-litter wishes sodden
on the ground. your prayer
was query, not request, but it
too could litterize. then you tuck
your roll into the stones and
turn around anyway,
all forward eyes, and
that is faith.

the baby teeth are a map
and a compass. when they
come out the real guys file in,
erupting the gums, ending
sentences with prepositions
until they learn where to stand.
It's a wisdom trap--the third
molars are learned until
they know they don't belong.
Someday they'll stop trying
altogether. Good riddance.
And in their place, the sutures
sew the site of eruption
like tying the loose ends
of a volcano and hoping
the lava pressure doesn't brew.
I came out when I saw I
could stand next to you. I trip
over uneven stitches.
I am not held together.

She was beside this guy,
and beside herself with her
and him. She remembers sitting
on his shoulders while the sun
set over Jerusalem. She
was smiling in such a way
that the sun was backing down
from a challenge neither it nor I
had seen, which is why
I took the picture.

It was beautiful to see. The tilt
of her head for his photographs, the link
of her arm for his steadying walk, the share
of her sounds with him--one
earbud apiece--all the things
she used to do with me

And in the holy city I was blessed
to see her dance
between two kinds of love
so seamlessly

The silicon in sand is learned
by crystal system, organized
into branches and the seed
crystal is cubic imagine
diamonds in the grains
imagine cut
against the grain a glass tree
doesn't know enough
of crystal symmetry to grow
back imagine it opens
a book leaves to pages
to learn only half
how to help the other
half how to dissociate
ions scattered across the earth
crust never enough.
This is how sand is made.

From the sixth floor on a Sunday
night you can see
the snake of green

lights switch to red, cars
jarred back a hundred
times stopped in tracks.

There is the jolt
when the robin's egg
cracks in my hands

that is the **** motion of waking
up from falling backwards. There
is the second hand, second

law of thermodynamic
arrow of time, the red
leaves want the earth

beneath them and sooner die
than go back up. There is sitting
cross-legged next to a jigsaw

waiting to see
why one can only wait
in one direction.

Of course, you can see
the traffic lights change
on other nights too,

but Sunday is the one I'm thinking of.