More on: Poetry

I don’t really pray anymore except to say help. 

I feel I’m more raccoon
—with questions curious as paws—
than brother to these patients, for whom the moon
seems closer company than either me or God.

I thought you’d be born
in Jerusalem.

I don’t blame you for that.

You could scatter the shoots across the world 
and they would die together, as one body.

our hearts labor at salvation
despite our honest efforts to resist

so efficiently do quail become creators
of quail like God filling the
desert floor with quail for his

children

Everything inside a mountain

has the right to be forgotten, but I have
the right to know, to access, make the coal seam

public.

Paul Desmond was a famous jazz musician.
He could play altissimo, the highest register.
His tone was light as a soul leaving the body.

But what is wrestling

if not an embrace? It’s too dark to know
you have the same face