Christ, I saw you upon the water
blown like a yellowed leaf
in a desert of seas of time,
Your motion sought resolution
your hand rose in holy gesture
withering into crucifixion.
I sought across time to touch
the water beneath your feet,
I sang holy songs to your gravity.
Wind blown, you drifted, easy
in the arms of your saviour
soothed by grand tapestries of futures.
Your death was easier than mine
will be ever and always, yours
was glory, glory, eli lama sabactani...
I see your props, your ropes of removal
and levers of faith, I see you
always ahead of me in the past,
You, who doubted but once in thirst,
twisted salvation from bread and wine, and
I, whose blood is but blood, whose flesh, flesh.
3 March 1996
I have spent all these years,
perhaps not so worthily,
coming back to your irreproachable formulae;
I loved you better with the sun
upon your thighs, with beach sand
mixed with your secret, public kisses;
I wrote for you many verses
then, and over the days they
have become sullen, tainted whores:
These lines, prostituted for
imagined virtues, faded like icicles
upon warming airs of false spring;
I bore on through hard seasons,
a packet of meagre poems clutched like a weapon,
a defense against mediocrity.
I do not like the sullen, dark
Northwestern forest bed, mulch, ferns
knotted trunks of redwood and alder
That have become your guise, not as much
as the view you offered of nudity
upon southern Californian mountains,
Do not relish it as much, but you,
sunken vision laden with years,
loaded with memory like some muse--
You will do, you whom I no longer
think that I know--you, too, will serve
as then, for a bewilderment of song.
