WEBVTT

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"On Being Asked to
be More Specific

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When it Comes to Longing."

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Someone did ask
me this, actually.

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Could you be more specific?

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So yes, I can be.

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"On Being Asked to
be More Specific

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When it Comes to Longing."

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"When the forest ended,
so did the star flowers

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and wild ginger that, for so
long, had kept us company.

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The clearing open before us,
a vast meadow of silverrod,

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each stem briefly an angled
argument against despair.

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Then, only weeds by a
better name against--

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name again.

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An incident as incidental
as the backdrop the ocean

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made just beyond the meadow.

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Like taking a horse
whip to a swarm of bees

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that they might more
easily disperse,

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we've at last reached
the point in twilight

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where twilight
seems most a bowl,

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designed to turn routinely but,
as if by accident, half roughly

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over.

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Bells somewhere.

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The kind of bells that,
before being housed finally

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in their towers, used
to have to be baptized.

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Each was given to swing
by, or fall hushed inside

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of, accordingly, its own name.

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Bells.

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And then, from the
smudged edge of all

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that seemed to be left of
what we called 'belief' once,

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bodies.

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Not of hunting birds,
what we thought at first.

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But human bodies in flight.

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In flight, and lit from
within as if by ruin.

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Or triumph, maybe.

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But having made out
of ruin a light.

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Something useful
by which, having

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skimmed the water to
search the meadow now

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for ourselves inside it.

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Where, yes, though we
shook in our nakedness,

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we lay naked as we've
been taught to do.

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When afraid, what is faith but
to make a gift of yourself?

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Give and you shall receive."

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