counterpoint

To be the beauty of your words,

the page that bleeds the liturgy of your hands,

the sorrows that pour like wisteria from a garden gate—

a haze of mauve—behind which you speak.

Oh, to touch something that burns so brightly.

The luminosity of this pain rivals the sun.

We reach and fall to the stars instead.

The space cups us in its safety.

We look out across the distance only to see the reflections of angels

And we sigh…

Lord, I call upon Thee. Hear me.

I am here in the morning with the night,

watching the light chase the stars from the sky,

a modest devouring,

A cadence of crickets,

the howls that follow Orion,

murmurations of moonlight,

a diffusion of bird calls.

I am caught in amber,

solitary in the dell,

among whose trees I have wandered long.

Only the sorrow sap flows freely.

What fruit is for me there?

I walk amongst the brambles.

We are all cups overflowing with this sadness,

Our deciduous existence,

the ritual ecdysis,

A nautilus advances,

stirring the larkspurs to a premature Spring.

Lord, I call upon Thee. Hear me.

My days grow long upon the earth.

To be an infancy of becoming,

a filament of stardust.

You are an obliquely painted face,

a disputation of light upon the water,

dissembling our natures.

The stars are but a limerence to the dawn.

They touch across the water.

The sea holds them both,

weaving the strings of their light together like a great tapestry.

Evanescent, temporal.

I have seen the constellations journey across the heavens,

dancing with the silhouettes of trees.

I alone stand still.

Fulcrum.

Oh, to drink from the Lethe,

to shed the yoke of remembering.

I seek the succor of Thy mercy.

My heart sings to Thee, an adoration in minor.

I harmonize with the trees.

The firmament rejoices,

but I am aloft,

disembodied.

What shall I be without counterpoint?

What hymn from my lips shall rise to praise Thee?

Lord, I call upon Thee. Hear me.

My heart is a womb,

my hands an aegis.

Quicken my lips to bear witness to Thee.

Unfurl my chaos to be ash in the morning watch.

I have been like a tree;

my seed has sprung forth from the earth.

Hewn by inequities, sewn in a lilac fog.

Bloody feet and broken toes,

a smattering of bones,

as I try to synchronize with steps not yet taken.

I am a tremor of myself.

Consonance eludes me.

A prefigured dominant,

all discord and vigilance.

To find anchorage in suffering,

on a pinion in despair.

Eunoia,

In cataclysm have I sought Thee.

In desolation, I weep.

Lord, I call upon Thee. Hear me.

I am burned in Thy sight.

Without tether, the universe exists,

a fragment in jacinth eyes.

All fire and fury, it smolders.

I loved for a time,

a moment incensed.

A crown of ivy, pendulous and serene—

—I am held in this flame.

It speaks my name.

Acrostic desire beckons,

by degrees, drawing out the sorrow it seeks.

A dance, a pas de deux in faith,

The cosmic drip has us both in its grip.

Lord, I call upon Thee. Hear me.

Let me look upon those eyes…

To be ensnared again,

to be borne aloft,

a gentle annihilation.

To make dust my desires,

to count my days and number them in the stars.

To be scattered, a quotient of ash,

and poured out over you.

To be sung in new measure,

and meet in quiet phrases.

…Oh, Lord, hear me.