The Lately Religious
I no longer roll my eyes at the lately religious
Who only pray when the plane shakes
The pitiful Styrofoam on the wobbly tray table wrapped around weak coffee
Is now the trembling well into which I also stare
Each night I ask my grief if it plans to turn off the fasten seatbelts sign
And I finger a chain link rosary
In remembrance of the flight we once took
When we trusted autopilot too far
And never could find a safe place to land
How To Be Still in the Dark
To teach me something about jumping
Gravity got together with the ground
Did I really expect to fly
and not fracture?
Birdsong and wind: the higher you are
The more you hear on the way down
You will be borne from below
Or not at all
Soil knows something you don't:
How to be still in the dark
Worm knows something, too:
How to move through it.
Talk to the kingfisher
About how to dive and survive
Watch the hawk watching
Broken feet beneath breathless you.
You will mind this now:
It is the crawling time
And also the caving
It is the hour of burial
and of mending.
I will drink my failure like Shiva
My elixir, soup from these broken bones.
Heaven and Earth, watch out for me.
I am arriving, I am coming home.
To teach me something about jumping
Gravity got together with the ground
Did I really expect to fly
and not fracture?
Birdsong and wind: the higher you are
The more you hear on the way down
You will be borne from below
Or not at all
Soil knows something you don't:
How to be still in the dark
Worm knows something, too:
How to move through it.
Talk to the kingfisher
About how to dive and survive
Watch the hawk watching
Broken feet beneath breathless you.
You will mind this now:
It is the crawling time
And also the caving
It is the hour of burial
and of mending.
I will drink my failure like Shiva
My elixir, soup from these broken bones.
Heaven and Earth, watch out for me.
I am arriving, I am coming home.
