Thin Spaces, Holy Sparks, & Sweetnesses

“We need to sit on the rim

of the well of darkness

and fish for fallen light,

with patience." 

― Pablo Neruda | El Mar y Las Campanas | The Sea and The Bells.

What We Talk About When We Talk About God

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Birdwing to sky 

The light in the feathers in the blue.

What interchangeable elements are there.

Look closely and they are not apart—

only suspended in time for a moment. 

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Dark matter holding stars, 

holding us in spirals

What else is in between the  stars, 

between us?

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At night, my arm around you,

your heart beating,

you put your hand on my chest,

closing the circuit. 

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Rose’s eye,  a circle of black surrounded by sky 

that holds all in view, 

reflects, inverts, transmits, perceives 

the entire cosmos, 

which has unfurled all to now, 

to bring into being, this. Her.

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 Tree swallows

dart above us

their white bellies

shooting stars 

across the blue.

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As tens of billions of molecules come in to my body, 

trade places with carbon dioxide—

surely, you are there.

Surely the cloud enters me, the cloud leaves me.

My longing to find you in everything isn’t wistful. 

It happening now. 

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I look out at the window framed in by moonlight

and all the shadows are my favorite shadows

the sounds are my favorite sounds

the stillness my favorite stillness

your breath, my favorite thing.

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The light of each day, 

its flame or its repose, 

they deliver to us, taking them from time, 

and so our treasure 

is disinterred in shadow or light, 

and so our kisses kiss life: 

all love is enclosed in our love: 

all thirst ends in our embrace. 

Here we are at last face to face, 

we have met, 

we have lost nothing. 

-Neruda

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Walking home tonight, all of us, I carry 

my 4-year-old daughter with a 

skinned knee piggyback.

We’re fanned out in the street, 

our shadows long in front of us, 

small silver seed circles drift from the elm tree 

spinning bright, in the wind, caught 

in the glint of sun, shimmering down, like coins,

for us.

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Is all light late, the echo to some prior bell?

Is it because I'm tired that I don't know?

Or is it because I'm dying?

When will I be born? Am I the flower,

wide awake inside the falling fruit?

-Li-Young Lee | Book of My Nights

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Learn from the cottonwood

who sails its seeds in cloudless sky

without want of any return 

every seed given freely

on the lightest lone white wing 

with slim yet hard hope 

that something 

will take hold.