More on: faith

What matters is what occurs occurs Between them, not to them. It’s only that The angel doesn’t matter, nor the virgin. A blade of light scissors the air Between them. To them it’s only that: A glancing blow, or a kind of cleaving, A blade of light. Scissor the air Wide open, then it happens:…

He made the Leviathan for the sport of it, The Lord of my childhood. Her fluke The size of two sleek rowboats For lifting and drawing down Knifelike into the water Or for slapping—so many gestures A fluke or fin can make with or Without ruin. I remember A whale rolling sideways Just—it appeared—so I…

Down the long road leading me back to me I saw my holy friends. I called hello. This is not allegory. Mind me well. I do not speak in tongues or prophecy. I talk in the plain speech of poetry, which is to say, the morning gives me stars, leftover nights from which to fabricate…

Santa Rosalía de Mulegé Baja California 1820 THE COCHIMÍ SAY THE VIRGIN guards her pearls, and for that reason the church is never locked. The stone mission of Mulegé, perched upon red hills above the reach of estuarial floodwaters, had no doors to lock. The Indian workmen had not finished the carving. The church doorway…