What is at first staring at birds on a wire
sooner or later if you think about it becomes staring into air.

This was the kind of staring I was doing the day of the blessing,
face to face with the bishop,

which was also the day I understood longitude and latitude
by way of the cross on my forehead.

I—my essence—was there in the middle where the oil
was thick, overlapping air and God who is both

through and across like a line of gold.
At least that’s one image I made of it.

Another was of all the particles that make me
finally concentrating in space. But as soon as I realized

my ecstasy, it no longer was ecstasy.
That is the nature of it. The beginning of the terminal wound.