Chapel of the Little Flower

You can't see it from the street
But Chapel of the Little Flower saves Detroit.
When the street burns-- it anoints with ashes.
When the street is hungry-- it feeds the street.
The homeless sing outside its doors
And the song carries up the alley
Like the flight of birds.

Seven Months at Sea

1

They pulled me from your sleep

But the rigging could not hold

Nor the anchor swim.

2

Like a navigator I charted the stars,

Waiting for the waves to break

Over the midnight voyage of our flesh.

3

You were swept along

On the sail of my breath

But the storm

Had carried us past our island.

4

In the morning the ocean

Opened our eyes

And the sun came to rest

On our shadows.

5

We studied the charts

Then spread our hands

To the wind.

6

You called me your captain

And fed me honey and almonds

The color of your shoulder.

7

Among red waves the sun went down.

In one stride came the night.

We had reached the edge of the world.

Stonehenge Revisited

The earth is cradled in a grave

The sky is buried in the earth

The stones are hanging from a thread of light

And everyone here has been here before

And everyone has come a long way

And those who love meet those who hate

And those who breathe air breathe stone

And those who are fire are dust

And those who are clay shall be wine

And those who arrive meet those departing

And children find their mothers

And fathers reconcile with sons 

And the old meet themselves in the young

And the young discover a road

And round the heavenly clock time is as nothing

And we cluster for warmth

At the brief fire of a thousand years

Manifest

One gust bends the reeds, another rights them.

A pond levels the eye in the light of the mind.

Fed with honey and light, dusk is sounding,

Stones detach, trees branch into trees,

People in the park stand apart, part of every part;

Paths drift from the path; those lost remain so;

And it is beautiful to live in two worlds, twice two,

Feeling and saying, believing and denying,

Witnesses to simultaneous sunsets, to an earth

Concurrent to ourselves and each others’ other.

Sunwise

              for my father 

Leaving home, sunflower fields on the right.

Returning home, sunflower fields on the left.

How else can one explain the difference

Between a road in space and a road in time?

Arab Woman

I saw a young Arab woman,
A spring wind was blowing her pale blue burqa
So that her body rippled through it like water
And the veil made her face appear.

Covered, she was transparent,
Diaphanous wavering reflection of blue iris,
Seashell in a glass pitcher,
Flower emerging from the sword,
Naked light under a lampshade.

Gracefully, her every step disrobed her,
Like a shadow on a mirror,
A palm leaf swaying at a window
Where sheer curtains are blowing.