Prayer is a many fingeredand kaleidoscopic thing—it foldsand unfolds inside of you. It entersthe many rooms you cannot enter.

There are boneswaiting for names in the graveyards.Even the sun above us is dying, onelanded repetition of light at a time.

Consider, O Lord, how You sit atop the sky;like a man in a glass bottom boat.Consider sky elsewhere; worn thin as a mattress.

Darkness moves like a pack of wild dogs.The wind moves like a wounded animal.The ground must be full of teeth by now.

Winter is already a lost shape, forgottenin the ground. Instead, here is Springwith all the grace of a womansmoothing out her apron.

I know my breasts, smallas plums, would win no blue ribbons.But in your hands they tremble and fillwith song like plump, white birds.

Consider, O Lover, my throatwhite as cigarette paper.The crushed lavender of my knuckles. My heart, a dulled needle threaded throughtoo many patterns.

Consider my Lover; the yellow churchof his skin, the clean wells of his ears;How the notes of a song come to himlike birds descending on a power line;How in his absence I am of twothroats--each of them cramped.

If the sun rolled back like an eye,it would see the mind of God.

That dandy, the sky, enters blue-suitedsun like a scotch in hand.