"On Being Asked to be More Specific
When it Comes to Longing."
Someone did ask me this, actually.
Could you be more specific?
So yes, I can be.
"On Being Asked to be More Specific
When it Comes to Longing."
"When the forest ended, so did the star flowers
and wild ginger that, for so long, had kept us company.
The clearing open before us, a vast meadow of silverrod,
each stem briefly an angled argument against despair.
Then, only weeds by a better name against--
name again.
An incident as incidental as the backdrop the ocean
made just beyond the meadow.
Like taking a horse whip to a swarm of bees
that they might more easily disperse,
we've at last reached the point in twilight
where twilight seems most a bowl,
designed to turn routinely but, as if by accident, half roughly
over.
Bells somewhere.
The kind of bells that, before being housed finally
in their towers, used to have to be baptized.
Each was given to swing by, or fall hushed inside
of, accordingly, its own name.
Bells.
And then, from the smudged edge of all
that seemed to be left of what we called 'belief' once,
bodies.
Not of hunting birds, what we thought at first.
But human bodies in flight.
In flight, and lit from within as if by ruin.
Or triumph, maybe.
But having made out of ruin a light.
Something useful by which, having
skimmed the water to search the meadow now
for ourselves inside it.
Where, yes, though we shook in our nakedness,
we lay naked as we've been taught to do.
When afraid, what is faith but to make a gift of yourself?
Give and you shall receive."