Nothing to say to those who would vacate
the mind yet move more slowly than the moon
after breakfast as it lifts away from the sky.

No trumpets, no tambourines, only the hollow
ache of a soul who yearns for God and God
can find her not, nor savor the taste of her.

In a time of farewells, soft with clandestine
calculations, no means exist to move beyond
thinking, no way to get outside of the outside-of,

the fragrant lamp of sensation that singes not.
Ambrosial, that first touch on the first day
of new love’s making when anguish departs

from bliss, a severing absolute and immeasurable.
Birds call their distant cousins, so sing, and singing
lift their spare forms so high they touch the chaos

of the myriad-handed, the final designer
of the cornucopian horn, the singer, the day,
whose vibrant sibilance weaves light with light.

The seer cannot see her losses. The nun who
would languish in her cell, stirs, stretches. The cave
will not enclose itself another day, nor fog

contain its seeking. Across the small pond,
the goslings drag their paddle feet amid honks
and great flappings of ample wings. Bassoon

copies the song of lute, lute the song of piccolo,
so vanishes a place to return to. Seas have wearied
of journeys. Ships have sunk. Sailors drowned.

The last strawman has burned in a red blaze
and the cap of fools descends on the hundred
heads of the unforgiven. The whole submerges

then re-emerges transfixed, and all that great
continuum of loneliness fades so quickly—death
could not come so quickly. To stride outside

the mind is to behold the mind and the fire
that fuels the mind in the wrack of the body's
best heat, the grace of its last dance, place

of one last kiss, trees ashimmer in a polish
of gold, mockingbirds and grackles in a mad
swirl, and sapphire evening in a blush of haze.