Prayer

Above the valley
floor mirages shimmer. Sweat
trickles into my

ears and eye-sockets.
As a boy I learned to shake
off the overflow.

Now I see through it.
Let my own nothingness re-
ceive from Your over-

fullness the excess
which absolves my finitude.
Let the waste blossom.

Listen

I know my need: to
be satisfied with myself.
It’s way past its sell-

by date. Spoiled by time.
The old way was to work hard.
Those habits remain,

the purpose in doubt.
I reread my masters’ words,
disproportionate

to my occasion.
I listen to other things
too, some beautiful.

Harbor

Grief is a fever,
it comes and goes but you hope
to see the future

hard and bright some day,
just you standing in the cool
dawn, ready to live

your own life alone.
Tears come nevertheless like
sunspots on the waves.

Quickie

Love bears the traces
of its conception, a quicky,
as per old Plato.

The myth explains my
feelings now that I don’t have
you: want and plenty.

I want you (back), I
have the surplus of love you
left me with that night.

I can’t complain. I’m
moving to a place you’d love—-
rivers, islands, boats.

Points touching and points
of departure: origins
of your loves and mine.

Worth

Is it newsworthy
the tyrant dangles the goods,
the masses swoon? One

reads of questing selves—
Odysseus shipwrecked, the home-
stead in extremis.

Crow calls to crow as
evening falls, the world a
mixed bag, but worth it.

Break

The heat wave palls then
a cool day. The flesh is grate-
ful, feels good again.

Our neighbor waves, we
wave back. Of one flesh, we say.
Who speaks for us now?

It’s only summer,
exposing us to our shared
belief in what we are.

Zeet

Hard not to hear all
the names of the birds I don’t
know in all this this

morning. I stay in
bed and listen. O there it
is, the note of won-

der: that it is at
all! In all this selfing the
nameless one, zeet zeet!