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Sunday, April 29, 2018

Passers-by

National Parks Service, 2015

My mother didn’t see it, but I did—a
gray fox, tail tip black as the burnt pine
stumps we’d passed. It was hurrying
across the asphalt road, towards the
woods, stopped while we drove past.
A long look over its shoulder. It met my
stare with its own—yellow eyes in ash
gray (a gold inclusion in smoky quartz)
so feral, so present—and then gone, off
into its own day as we went into ours.

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Cresset

skeeze, 2009

I’d like to forge one in the shape of my hands
to hold chili pepper suet-cakes (not fatwood),
keep the flame of a mating pair of nuthatches
lit. Or maybe cast a cresset in a lost-wax mold
from a whorl of grand fir branches, bracketing
a wildfire with iron needles that’ll never burn.
Beauty made to fill with heat and light, like us.

Sunday, April 08, 2018

Guanyin

Her makers knew his lidded gaze,
inward-seeing, outward-looking,
must take us all into the heart of
compassion as pure gift. Into loving
stillness. Her gilding an homage to
all the graces scintillating from his
transcendence. The venerated one
who listens to the cries of every last
living creature has been recast as an
exquisite mirror, ornament riffling in
waves on every surface, yet surfaces
empty of all but the light comprising
you, and me, and all her beloveds.