my dust and i will surely forget the smell of approaching rain

into the round hole in quiet moss

into the hand    opened    waiting

the blue flowers of her cloak

stirred by rain

and the rain climbing down

the knees of the soil as

slow as your life in a dream

we cannot separate

the secret from the offering

awake and breathing

            watching words

drizzle against panes i

            can’t be reached through

quiet centuries of rain

            standing under

my thirst

            the heart no one

notices

            in a white sky

wings

            suddenly open

whose face i have never seen
who brought me the gift i
         only desire
                  in her presence
who also held and kissed
         her child's cold body
                   and still had to live
whose breath could not
          bring life back
to whom the moon and the dark
         entrance belong
         the walk of sunlight through
         a windless forest and
         the longing to love
she who knows
         my heart will wear out

who is

the thunder and

lightning

who is the storm cloud

and wind

the tumultuous music of rain

is what happens

intense song-bursts of light

tectonic

collisions of sky

            rolling bonding

above the earth    with the earth

            where you are

the work of the sun

            is wine on my skin

and summer heat in my veins

            the work of the sun

is with the roots of the river

            and cannot be lifted into light

the work of the sun

left our father an orphan

trespassing within his own blood

the work of the sun

is what the house finch is saying

and what i am saying

to ourselves and to all others

the word you came from

will rise again

when it fades

            the sky appears an empty bowl

when our lips are long closed

            memory must breathe through our skin

each day my face reappears in this river

            for the sake of the traveler who doesn’t return

what have i done with my longing

why have i brought her to stale Ohio

to the selfish soybeans

into the company of sycamores

            who are as they should be

                        in the polluted nights

and who think of going nowhere else

when i am without

body

and the prison of sunrise

collapses

is that the moment

                                    you say

the lie

arrives

to begin again

            in the labyrinth of the womb

of astonished silence

like a white chrysanthemum

            in deep shadows

in new flesh

before the earth has weight

before the dust of the savior

            comes down from the wind

before the road takes leave of the shore

the moon

            lost her way

along the river

and i lost

my way across

            the sky

and the gentle

            light opening

in the arbor

            of sleeping faces

is not meant

            for eyes

now the rain stops

in mid-afternoon

now the moon can’t

be seen but

i know she is singing

in the small burrow

she makes

in the bank of the river

now i walk through

the window

and across

the wet sky

to where dream faces

are drifting    

without sound

above the dark river

and through

the sycamore trees

detached from the poem

            there is always a voice drinking and dying

            there is always a noisy fountain dying of thirst

but in here where there is no sound   

i hear the voice

of the friend who loved you

fields of light and darkness

no one else is going to touch—

this Ohio grows old within me       

a woman releases the raven’s feather

she has always owned

my body no longer dreams it is a river

            and what cannot be understand is hushed

and earnest

gathering its breath

i don’t understand

the within

of what i’m seeing

that rises up

uneasily

in sinuous

white limbs

across the kindness

of the river

it breathes

from my heart

we share

space in the dream

mother sycamore

            of the long sculpted shadows

            of the ruined wind

your nave

whispers

who taught me to love another language

            to follow what i do not know

thus the house i lived in has abandoned me

            and the water no longer asks my name

the god of death chants with children

            of the longing that is lost in my face

i have the eyes to hear her searching for me

            in a life before this    in the mirror of the earth

because i died i am living

now the soil of extinguished souls begins to sing

and those who bestow blessings will throw open    my rose

( your window remains dark because nobody knows you

            before an audience of words lying in frozen silence

            dance eyes who cannot hear a call from the dark )

before going ahead i am already gone

            this is the blessing i wished for

            for the harvest of mystery will come on a day no one can forsee or explain