There will come a time
when from our aloneness

all the gaiety and sweet wine of
homecoming overflow the table.

Loved ones gather from miles around
to drink to the prodigal child.

The neighbors complain, “Let us sleep!”
but the laughter continues til dawn.

Before bed the conversation turns sober,
of grace and gratitude and old friendships

but of long road home, not a word,
its only trace the dust of shoes

glowing gold on the front porch
in the warmth of the rising sun.

You could smile in a thousand ways
at our small, misguided salutations.

Still, we do what we can to praise
with the stone and mud at our disposal.

One who is capable of seeing sees;
the rest fly in unknown desire.

The muezzin’s call, the priest’s chant—
lost fragments of memory rising.

Thought we call in the trebles of children
is not all our striving worship?

Again and again unanswered mystery.
Still, we do what we can to praise.

This will be a morning of looking,
of nothing but sweet gazing.

We’ll forget about method and the
dry pleasure of should and ought.

Light and darkness—what have
they to do with intimacy.

At dawn you left the gate unlocked
and, beyond, your window open.

A silhouette glows in the curtains.
I trace its beauty with my heart.

This will be a morning of looking,
of nothing but sweet gazing.

My eyes have nowhere else to be
and neither, it seems, do you.

What is the difference
between the frozen lake
and summer’s first running
dive off the dock’s end?

The next degree of orbit.

Turning and turning
days grow long and light
all shadow finally filled
by the laws of geometry.

Thought my mind abandons
you in every season
and the cold pretends to own me
you live in my forgetfullness

as the red heat of noon
burns inside white winter skin

as the blue of seven seas
lives inside each melting crystal
of iced-over desire.