The ground gives a push.
The rocks applaud,
and nearby, waterfalls like rivers of joyful tears—
that time laughing so hard at my son
toddling around the house
with an erection on which he’d hung
the friendship bracelet from the Bible People
that said “What Would Jesus Do?”
Answer that one and you might be able to see
those purples, reds, and yellows,
the subtle lavender gloss, sheeny greens and pinks,
even the over-the-top oranges,
and not be tempted to pick the explosive petals
to press into a notebook
with the desperate hope
you could one day open the pages
and say as it was, let it be.

Try again: you are what you do:
I reddy paintbrush purply gold and greeny green green.
I Pearly Everlasting. I fillyum trillium, birdfoot violet blueflag.
I write down these scribbles of smoke,
                   and we sometimes see them against the sky:
The fire is always coming. And it’s coming soon.

when you hold your breath against a moment’s passing--
the dropped glass suspended above cement,
loosed arrow yet to pierce the target, a thrown stone just a hole
in water prior to the widening ripple. Say it:
A woman sleeps, comforter and sheets
holding her shoulders in a cottony embrace.
Outside the window, sliced melon on a silver tray,
then lemon wedge plunked in the middle
of a pink salmon steak: sunrise.
Outside the window, sparrows rattle like castanets
and launch themselves to air. Outside the window,
the once again damp daily news
lands with a papery thud
in the dew-soaked grass. A woman sleeps,
and you sit at the foot of the bed, pleasantly obsessed
with the thought that a woman sleeps
without worry or care, sleeps toward that moment--
and here there will be those who hem and haw,
shuffle their feet, and look away. Pity their disbelief
because she sleeps toward that moment when the world
will stutter and pause, the lungs’ imminent flexing
hitching against their release, raucous heart
holding its persistent beat, reckless sparrows
hovering mid-air, even the planets
bucking against their cosmic spin, as she rises from the comforter and sheets
and stretches. Yes, those muscles; yes, those tendons;
the beloved’s body of water and light and bone. Yes,
the long loneliness of night is over,
for she stretches and lets the day begin.

Although at the market, the produce aisle, surrounded
by a palette of fruit and vegetables, luscious pears,
juicy tangerines, the tiny blue muscles of plump huckleberries,
tomatoey reds, cucumbery greens, the faded sheen of waxed
apples, and so on, flavors recalled by the always hungry tongue,
a bald boy stares at you, and you need to shout or sing
at his lost hair: St. Jude, we are all wandering
stars with no one to snatch us from the fire. But tomatoes
call you back to your squeeze-and-choose, and when you look again,
he’s gone. Abandon your life to a shout, announce that ache
for a song: say you shall sing o peach and sing,
say you shall shout damn the silence of saints and shout.
Feel o my child and feel. Say you shall act.