Three religious sonnets
What, my Lord, do I lose sight of
when I believe in sight that holds
the world within it, which, opposed
to finding sight unfold within the world,
believes itself? What, my Lord, meaning
comes to land on like a speckled rock dove
is always fraught, and I forget the cliff
face is met with powerful ocean water
every time. My Lord does not compare
the face of one to the other like I do,
and neither does my Lord calculate
the dove egg’s path as it rolls in the slim notch.
--
When every morning in the truth I find
myself missing, patently unaware, spirit
gestures for me, forgotten but unbothered,
as if to make the accidental mudras of the day
up to the forearms, elbows, shoulders,
grain and warp, purposed. I guess which scars
may correspond to which wounds, and when
in my life I’d incurred them, when
their names had passed my lips last,
what the taste was like. If anything,
spirit tastes like rice wine, stringent
but real, like joys of passing sweetness.
--
Arise, my Love, there’s vapor yet unlifted
left of all those stray sounds your mouth makes
often called words. Mistaking them as confidants
you let their foggy wakes condense forming consonants:
care, comfort, capillary, cord,
Karnataka, kite, kindness,
calcifying when exposed to air
but then the outer shell protects
the stuff inside from undergoing similar reactions.
Awake, there’s sound already in your mouth in bed,
a prayer embarrassed to be clothed in language, so instead
come tears, rising from the heat of your cheeks as vapor.