Consumed

What the wolf hides
the mice eat.  What is
left, flies breed; their
maggots eat.

The only things
that don't eat are
the wound

and his twin sister
grief.

There

is a place, a cliff above

a grey ocean, a pinnacle

the last lovely, truthful

point where a woman or

wolf, hidden and revealed

can stand in sheets of rain;

God's face on His most

lonesome day, intimate

and naked.  

For a thousand years

I'll remember that face,

the dark angels with their

black, dripping fur, their eyes

saying everything is part

of this and us.  

When my body unleashes

its soul, I'm sure

you'll find us

there.

The Seamstress

Don't think I haven't noticed
in the still world that part
that plunges forward

as if to cast itself
back to the beginning

when the hands that held
the soul for awhile
desperately, left it

blind and kneeling.

I don't recognize you now
or myself but I hear
two voices speaking

softly about trauma,
about how stitches can
make two separate pieces

seem one

until the seamstress
snips each tightly woven
thread

as she's been trained
to create halves of some

and mend the others.

To Stay or Struggle

I waited, resisted
unconvinced.

One who understood
that happiness
is dangerous

that sadness itself
was life's first
test.

I've stayed here
deathless
for years

small and earthly
stuck in the hollow
shaped by

my own lack
of skill.

Or was it devotion,
a sense of hope
that eventually

all things are moved
by some shift of
space.

To those given passion
to work against
nature

to squirm and grope,
to pull, to push,
to remove

their restless bodies
from the safety
of hidden places

join the gliding, whirling
stunningly surprising,
always unpredictable

world.