Timeless Gesture

Tonight

a feast day I decided not to enter

the dining room with monks

good stories and desert Fathers’ and Mothers’ strong wisdom

to feast

there would be desserts

plenty of wine at the tables

Tonight in my room independent    stepped from complacency

            a piece of wind   a turn in the story

                       the north star fixed to my brow

I hear the wild mallards at their quieting

down on the Pecos river   coyotes near hysteria laughing

          with as many surrenders as dry reeds rustling

round the pond in nightshade desolation      humiliations

Tonight alone with abandoned doves

           with the lake of light   a chip of my tooth

in my shoe

           with loons as vigil for the frightened

and new dead

           Time does not pass

crystalline water will not sparkle

nor quench their thirst.

Tonight in the secluded vacancy of my lost unsaid words

in as many places at once

casting my line in the choppy seas

trolling for the new Jerusalem

on a clear frosty night

          The pond that I dug yesterday

is full of moonlight

            Strangely entering the walls of my room

where I stand upright and alone