I am in Target, trying to find those
small travel-size kits of shampoo and soap,
drifiting away from the task at hand,
thinking about Pascal burning 
at midnight in his room, his eyes 
ablaze with God, stitching his epiphany
next to his heart.

We are not at one with this world. We lay
foundations for homes we will not
inhabit. Tea cools untouched.
Books lie open to chapters we will
not finish. Under the gray sky
we are restless, weary,
walking without vision,
with shortness of breath.

If we think God is up there,
we are lonely always. If the strong man
could know when the thief would
break in, he would
bar all doors and windows.

The door is unlatched, Silent One,
Mysterium Tremendum. Enter at
will; set ablaze this heart.

There was no reason
I shouldn't walk by the lake,
where the geese glided, mystified
and silent, two by two,

across the face of the moon —
yet, I held back
to hear the wind
slip slyly through the branches.

The wind blows where it will.
It stirs the ancient waters;
angels dive through it cleanly,
parting the air like knives.

The full moon brings
the lonely and the mad 
to the surface of the world,
gasping for words and stroking for shore.

Were I to surface,
calling those with ears to hear,
I would cry out in all tongues,
"Watch! Learn! Do not rest!"

There are few leaves
on the trees just now.
Each one feels tied to place.
Soon each will be freed to drift — exultant! —
believing its pattern of falling to be flight.

He was walking that morning
before dawn. It was 24 degrees,
with a tight wind that
wound round his head
and brought him tears.

He was planting his feet carefully,
small steps to find the rough
patches, watching for black ice 
placed like a joke you
could laugh about because
you weren't going to fall for it.

We stand to walk. Oftentimes we fall —
for sleep, for dreams, for love's sake.
Falling and falling, again and again.

You know how
one thing leads to another,
how way leads on to way?
How I find myself
in this place and a face
coming to mind,
the same face every time?
I am ungathered from sleep,
imprinting on that first word,
first song, first memory
cracking the threshold
of still another day.
How I stumble, breathless
at the threshold,
regard myself pacing
into my own Sinai, scanning,
scanning for the burning bush,
compelled each morning
to turn aside, take off my shoes,
for once again I am on
holy ground.

I saw a man break the spine of a book,
bending it front to back while he rattled on.
I don't know what he said; I was transfixed.
I had to walk away.

I come from a family of book hunters.
They taught me the care and feeding
of books, whose greatest needs
are the caress of a hand, attention paid,
the smoothing of a page, the release
of spiritu hungering to breathe.

In the forest a book grows greenly,
sturdily seeks the light and air, towers up
through mists, golden breezes, jagged lightning.
Storms rise up, rivers are born, the earth breathes.
Time is lavished — this is important —
much time is spent. The growing of books
cannot be rushed; care must be taken. Patience
is requisite.

I grew up, left home, traveled far,
live in cities, listened to the prophets,
rolled their words around my mouth.
They were sharp, but sweet, and melted
against my teeth. Only the taste remained.

When long years had passed, I found them again,
this time in a book. It is paper, ink, board, thread,
glue. It is the pearl of great price.
I sold all to gain this treasure.

For Edward Hopper

Alone on Hopper's street,
you blink into that hard-edged
light. You could hold the city
tenderly in your hands if asked.

It's a cherished aloneness,
Sunday morning after
Saturday night, when the soul is
loosely attached, easily idle.

This world of memories . . .
not mine — I covet those memories,
the light through those afternoon windows —
a geometry of silence,
a place without invitation,
but which might be discovered
if I do not intrude.

If you can gaze into that room
and do not ask who lived there
or where they went, you might
earn the right to sit in that slanted light
in silence without regret.

"Let us go straight to Bethlehem . . ."  — Luke 2:15

When the angel appeared,
the shepherds were in the hills,
the dogs circling the flocks, the men
tending the fire. Then the eldest stood watch
for the drowsing others
under the stars.

There was nothing out there
they couldn't handle. They were solid,
made of the ground they walked upon,
easily moved by song and poem, scornful
of city folk, calloused in hand, sparing of speech.

The angel shot the night wide open
in an instant, towered in flame
before their hooded eyes, flooded their
ground with a sounding brightness.

(O smallest you, how will you survive
the baptism of this fiery purity?)

There were directions: a baby in a manger in
Bethlehem. They left the sheep with the oldest one —
setting deference aside — to run breathless
into the night. They found the place alright,
animal instinct tracking lightly and sure.

Gods and angels: what did they know of such?
This child's holy fire burned so deep
that closed eyes saw it all entire
for nights and days and memory of years.

". . .all generations will count me blessed." — Luke 1:48

She threw her head back, this girl,
and sang out a song of fierce joy,
of thrones overturned, vast armies
conquered, the least of these upthrust
and upheld, this cry of triumph
leaping up from her throat into
the smoky air.

She saw herself in a dance
she would later dream about. Astonished,
she opened her heart, this girls, and the song
poured forth. It was a spring gushing up,
water of life flowing, breaking rods
and chains like branches in the wind,
a scirocco in the wilderness,
a tempest over Galilee.

It is an arrow to the heart, the heart,
in time, pierced through and through.
Silence at windows, dead embers raked.
Honor and reverence and mute memory.

But now, here, this moment: all is glory.

There in the Annuciation she is preserved as in
a jeweled box with lilies, a dove of discreet
geometric glory in a radial symmetry above her,
the vanishing point precisely configured
beyond the angel, touching down in a Tuscan town.

Now she is at the bus stop, chewing a fingernail,
glancing at her phone as the bus rolls up,
all compressed air and scrolling LEDs.
The doors hiss open, the cool air drapes
like a shawl around her shoulders.

She has a rolling pack, chooses a window seat,
gazes as the streets turn into lanes, fields, then
forests, cliffs of fall and gorges, night slipping down
the flanks of mountains, blades of dawn up over the
plains, to a cattle gate and a house far up the drive.

The bus will rumble off, dust feathering away.
She will turn to walk, her heart quickening.
There will be a figure waving, then running,
graying hair and parchment skin,
a woman exultant, a leap of joy within her womb.

The year descends,
drops behind the moon,
cold in the night and aflame
with stars.

Now we warm ourselves
with ancient stories of stars
on the move, not contained
by powers or tribes, crossing borders.

There was a first Advent — against the odds.
It was promised. We believed
so fervently we did not see the One
who came, crossing borders without a sound.

It's not that certainty is wrong,
but there is imagination. And hope.
Everything else is blind experience
or gossip.

There is a wilderness
inside us, a desert wilderness.
Promises as cold as contracts,
despair feeding the cosseted self.

Hope burns. In the last age
it flames up against the wind,
fuels the Advent promise,
the one yet to come.