Icons follow over arch
of door of wings.
Events lead to events.
More modern varnish. Your solemn
overarching.
I
On the table different instruments.
Embrace under canopy
your moment of travail.
We will not address you again.
II
Not beeswax he swallowed.
A heavier lifting,
domed rejoinder.
Hope your mother meant it.
III
Does she hesitate in giving?
A hand could flutter
if imperfect.
See her already up the stairs.
IV
More of a crowd than I would allow.
All the gesturing
sprigs point to season.
Wash the painful possibility.
V
Burnished symmetry and unequal fishes.
Submission hovers,
a hand nears touch.
Mystery may come still into water.
VI
After so much waiting, recognition, spark.
A voice coming
forth out of rust.
Depart in peace our tired dismissal.
VII
If we count back as we have the habit.
Assent is a lily,
a breath.
Already quickening under the folds.
VIII
Branch underfoot a leaf, your coat.
Eye, a gate,
needle, a kneeling camel.
Celebration as deliberate blinders.
IX
Who is looking up, and if not up, where?
Disciples,
your flimsy sandals.
All the lands and seas still to go.
X
When touched the tongue or the ear.
Stop in the street
to understand.
The sudden flame of it.
XI
Hurled from the rocks by force of vision.
If follow
was not clear.
Hide your face from what is.
XII
Is sleep an assumption?
Strange separation,
small, lifted away.
And they left staring at what is not.