Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, ****** like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded
down starch halls with the other unnested throng
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head
moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong.
But this is an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.

The doctors are enamel. They want to know
the facts. They guess about the man who left me,
some pendulum soul, going the way men go
and leave you full of child. But our case history
stays blank. All I did was let you grow.
Now we are here for all the ward to see.
They thought I was strange, although
I never spoke a word. I burst empty of you,
letting you see how the air is so.
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me
and I turn my head away. I do not know.

Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in.
Six times a day I prize
your need, the animals of your lips, your skin
growing warm and plump. I see your eyes
lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies.
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?

Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms
fit you like a sleeve, they hold
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms
of your nerves, each muscle and fold
of your first days. Your old man's face disarms
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold
me. I speak. It is you my silence harms.
I should have known; I should have told
them something to write down. My voice alarms
my throat. "Name of father-none." I hold
you and name you ******* in my arms.

And now that's that. There is nothing more
that I can say or lose.
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore
rocking off you. You break from me. I choose
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose.
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.

Which is my church with its green leaves, brown grass
and pine’s bark, all foresting in one motion.
I shall forest rituals of sacrifice,

but without Catholicizing faces drawn
from dark Crusading and my exiling.
Annaling to mark the sun’s solstice for Eastering
and holying days, the dew
coalescing upon the darkening and browning grass
at midnight and cooling air
arching constellations
and the mooning of the night: the cue
to lying for rest
by the small pool in this placing or
to strike, savaging at prey.

Owling as it does, darting as it does,
from a bed of branches, crying,
soundlessly shooting at a forest mouse, leaves
rustling for this night’s Nativity,
this one lifts its butterflying wings
like the soul’s silhouette
taken by an angeling force to heaven.
After owling, angeling, butterflying,
one must create Jesus as a verb.

Having witnessing these things,
limits are paining, as are knowings and doings.
The mouse must have been distracting
this owl from its offspring, thus it was Christing:
sacrificing itself for its children, thus fathering.

Seeing angels fluttering under the moonlight,
Hairshirting is my Church after living here,
after travelling through East of Eden in daylight.
  
Simplifying the Word---so heartwrenching---near
dawn or dusk, being as a penumbra’s cusp
I am Giotto’s halo in human form, keeper

of the haze, smoke, storm, and most of all, cup
from my own despairing.

Always there more to God than pain.

Churching myself is my work, thus by expressing
this foresting, owling, angeling, butterflying,  
I narrate my life’s kingdom.
Only beautiful words for my Beatrice, Florence,
and re-Edening.

Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, ****** like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded
down starch halls with the other unnested throng
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head
moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong.
But this is an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.

The doctors are enamel. They want to know
the facts. They guess about the man who left me,
some pendulum soul, going the way men go
and leave you full of child. But our case history
stays blank. All I did was let you grow.
Now we are here for all the ward to see.
They thought I was strange, although
I never spoke a word. I burst empty
of you, letting you learn how the air is so.
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me
and I turn my head away. I do not know.

Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in.
Six times a day I prize
your need, the animals of your lips, your skin
growing warm and plump. I see your eyes
lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies.
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?

Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms
fit you like a sleeve, they hold
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms
of your nerves, each muscle and fold
of your first days. Your old man's face disarms
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold
me. I speak. It is you my silence harms.
I should have known; I should have told
them something to write down. My voice alarms
my throat. "Name of father-none." I hold
you and name you ******* in my arms.

And now that's that. There is nothing more
that I can say or lose.
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore
rocking you off. You break from me. I choose
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose.
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.

Word of confusedness when something's not right
Howling inside your mind like there's no solution
Y*elling and keep on begging for the answers
.
when you know, there's no answer for it*
.
so,why?

(V)elvet were the skies when in november rained.
(H)owling was the gustling of the wind before the winter solstice came.
(O)ver the mountain tops trees started to sway.
(N)eatly stretched branches dancing like children at play.
(G)reeting the heavens and waving at the sun and its melodious rays.

(N)ot far from the lake side stood a shack.
(A) spider weaving web of threads so elastic, lives on the back.
(V)aguely watching the world as it revolves and as it slowly cracks.
(A) ghostly whisper was heard in a nearby brush.
(R)elentless as it echoes repeatedly through a green woodland lush.
(R)ight about the country side a bond was made.
(O)ne sacred union between a lumber jack and a lovely southern maid.