Jagged with Love

God Is the Dream

GOD IS THe Dream I. your LoaF OF BreaD Just for practice, let things rot. Leave the bananas on the counter. Stay the gerber daisies with mold in their dark sockets, the baby roses damp with age. Let it push out from all our peels. On your loaf of bread, green-black dust like a breath of coal. On an orange, spores, spilt like tiny white thoughts from the tough, wrinkled head. Can't you feel it, this possibility oflife springinghelpless and bold across our kitchen, writing its language on the husks and skins, which are also the inside of my mouth, taut and cool, waiting, which is also the palm ofyour hand. Hold to the marble top, love, let the subtle bruises of our bodies rise and brown, the spots of age mistake themselves for joy. Just for practice, staywith me, pushed close to the bulbs of openness. Ifit is enough, slowly softening, hour by hour, day after day, remember that we were children, we whispered silver hairs into the air, held the block of cheese to the light to see its fuzzy cover. 59 60 II. BOWLS OF MY BODY We could stand and flip pancakes over the griddle all night, speculate the robins, the albino squirrel, their precarious caches. We could watch the line of shadow sift up on the wall ofthe barn, like a gray lake rising, the eye closing, a slow lever ticking shades ofyellow up, up. Instead I will go to the porch, let you fInish the plates of batter. On this side ofthe house God sits with me, swinging like we care, working the nausea of the day down to my feet. The bricks are speckled, the black spider unhurried, the sun to the tips ofthe trees now. How is it all our dry moments come together like a fIeld, spread before us heathered and barleyed, aching for the mind to run through it, aching for anything to set us to tears. Love could be made to steam, could be made to turn and brown. Only, the sun has set and here I am, my shoulders mottled with knots, willing the bowls of my body to fIll. III. HOLY It is September and the earth is waiting for us to fmd her. all the corners oflonging chamfered. all the leaves in silent. excellent suspense. These years together are a fruit. and our children hang from the branches in my belly. Our years together will fall from the tree. Tonight. I pray us a long. long lovemaking. At the end of the black sky. I wait for you in our bed. Here is how: you will turn offthe light. Nothing will be said. exceptyou will know how strong my heart is working in here. and you will not fall asleep. What can we touch? It is tremulous here. in our orchard air. you fmishingyour book. me. marauding the spirit of Midas: I turnyou to gold. Only it is not gold. it is warm like flesh and together we hang. suspended against the other. we hang and brown. our bodies awry with love. God is touching us. the pillows. the purple-black frame of night. the pungency above the grape arbor. God is the dream chargingfrom your body into mine. God is my hollow bowl holdingyour gold. We can touch anything now. And nothing. Your hair hanging down. your mouth a stunning insect spread across your face. opening its dark wings. it is only you who can speak. 6~ Iv. THe FeaST OF US Even the short. deadened nights are a beautiful bird to me. You. here. Me. here. I think of the rounds of air. circling our home. the backyard furniture. the clothesline I've never used. all the cedar trees voicing complaint in the wind. the coyotes answering with the moon. Tomorrow I will go in again. they will slide the microscopic camera into my navel. seek and eradicate those dark places of tissue piled up against the organs. I am not rotting. the brown spots inside my body. I am not rotting: it is only fingertips of a joke. those chronic cells de trop. I tell you it is the kitchen ofthe body. apricots. pears. plums in her baskets. a cup ofsalts in her cupboard. she meets you with a vase of New England Bluets on her shining. mo;st countertops. Nothing has been thrown out. only shelteredvariously. Nothing has...