The invitation unopened, but already
The presence of a yes. Enter or exit—
Revolve between—we go once more
Into prayer. What is remembered is
What simply won't be washed away.
Words particle to breath—swill, sweep,
And storm. Said inside procession of,
Said limbo, said lowered bar each time—
The dancing king marionettes through
The syllables of his forgiveness. To be
The words of gods diving from the lips
Into a manger or said swift to the cross,
Some dribbled wine that's wiped away.
So it is inside out and outside in—broke
Vocabulary puzzled back to whole in
Portable shrines, depart and then arrive.
The name you'll have to say a marble
In your mouth, a bolt bright-coughing
In the vault, a thorn into your aging flesh.
What will you say when it arrives?—
Small message of tangled roots, sapped
And sinewed clarity, the opening words
That smolder when you have yet to believe.

                               *

So easy to mistake the sky for heaven
Or the ground for all we've got. Gravity
Does her mundane and thankless job,
And we forget what keeps us pinned
Down to the earth. The days shuffle,
Small graces which we easily forget:
Like orange peels, a nearly finished book,
Beads of water on a sweating glass. We
Walk up to the rail and call it communion—
It's reunion, it's address. Saying what
We think gods want to hear, but the heart's
A little atlas with island unexplored, mind's
An anthology of losses parchment in
The evening air. What tethers each amen
We say, what words fly so far and fast—
The indecisions we forget. Air bound up in
The lung, every prayer a blasphemy at last.

                               *

No—not a reliance we can name—
Each map has folds and tatters, respect
Its paid in silence. Each morning
The infant searches the terrain of breast,
Hunger blinked in sweet breaths.
Each morning a blade down the hill
Of his cheeks and washed out through
The drain. Always what we give away
Brings us back together. Compassed
In magnetic abandon graced of patters
In the weather: pantapon hues, moon-
Rise, dusk matter, small snow. What
Trembles in the sky becomes just as
Inexact. And we enunciate the angles
Of our prayers by moving just enough
To bump into our walls. We keep to
Naming the body by what it is or isn't,
What it was or can't quite be—tendoned
Topography set down and turned back
To itself. To get it right just once would be
So nice—asphalt, fission, static cling,
Jupiter light like tangles in the stars—
Our better angels sketching the unseen.