Gnosis
I can’t give you everything I know,
even if I wished nature held that kind of sway.
Take for example the thousand heads
I want to show you of grasshopper weeds,
their tips like fragile, flaming fleece,
bobbing one wave in the final pentecost of dusk.
Go with me while I walk,
each step forward a step back.
Think to the days our grandmothers lived,
younger than we are now, when they staved-
off long as they could their smallest fears of thunderstorms,
and the worst — their children coming to early harm.
Such deaths might not have happened
right in front of them, but did.
The train passes with its blast just when we’ve crossed.
We wait out time and boxcars, recross the tracks,
retrace our steps, though we can never
really be the same place over
or live another’s life, or know another being’s joy or fears.
Yet can’t we feel the seismic passages, as if they’re ours?
Look and listen. I will give you everything I can,
you give me yours, this moment, when the twilight spans
the purpling sky, such sudden dark
above us that we’re taken aback
by clumsy blindness,
blind to even one winging shadow of the geese,
so close we hear their plumage work. They honk invisible.
But hold on to your faith, ridiculous, insensible.
They must be there if you can hear them.
They must be there, even if you can’t see them.
What’s there is there. What’s there?
Nothing ever stays in place for long, like a rare
and fleeting evening star. You blink,
it’s gone. No need to bow in praise or thanks.
The world won’t
run because of what you pray or don’t.
It runs despite us,
driven as the faithful geese,
who rant their V into the tired night, long miles away,
where someone else looks up now, trying to see them go.