More on: promise

I made you a promise I intended to keep:
I will cover my body; I will keep your words near
like the pearl at the curve of my ear. 

Amazing how the prayers come back, ———the cues to stand and kneel and sit, the hymns rising after so many years into the air of this small old church. ———We lean together in summer sunlight as the priest wafts past in an incense cloud and the small choir ———sings off-key in corner light. Yesterday you…

———Then will I carry you within me for as long ———as I can: not a ———consolation but a promise, and not because ———I must: not as you ———carried me but to be your keeper, a place where ———you remain the one ———bearing life: not as a god or idol that I ———have made too small,…

For Benny Efrat No one expected the horses to remember the Flood. Time’s nail had rusted in the horseshoe when God Let the wet shout go into the world. Since then warriors raced upon their backs, Nations wandered And the wind’s whip snapped a gallop in their legs. I therefore ask my friends in the…

New York At noon precisely, just as the bells began to ring, the white peacock in the garden of Saint John the Divine spread its glorious tail, making a rippling many-splendored sound, like a sibilant wind rushing through many leaves. The tips of its feathers, shaped like tiny V’s, reminded me of doves descending, the…