i.

He showed me this book called "Discovering God." And guys?
I nearly did choke on the swanning spray of insufferable light—

"Some people can only take seconds
of God’s voice," he said. But for me
it was, like, the rubbery-awake I get after a slap,

or (not that I did that in a while) after I
write a poem, then open the window

to the naval dawn air.

I see a hawk being chased by sparrows.

And I won’t ever again write simply again

'cause I won’t ever feel
the simplicity of an again bloodthirsty
sparrow.

The guy with the book is gone. Above his seat
there’s a sad mousetailed triangle of mist. &

gently, out of it you step—

like a kid with Down’s down a Sunday staircase
and into the golden dinette where her eggs are waiting.

O touch my forehead. Tell me
it’s OK not to be modern.

Or say shit like: "Newsflash! En route to manger
shepherds with canes mistaken for fighters
are shot dead by our boys!" My little

pony, sparrows'r'us, O Philomel, can we sing "clouds" now

like back when the beautiful was beautiful? Please please sing of the shepherds:

"Theirs was a love too perfect." Ergo, it had to flunk.

And it was shapely to lose all my stuff.

The wallpaper, care bears, the morning star

and the rose of the sea and the rose of the wind. The stuff
I began from. The wooden horse.

A see-saw in the spray of light.

Always the beast has a remote heart.

'Cross seven seas, beyond two hills as two
Lambs facing each other, in a meadow fine as my lady's kerchief, a boar

Grazes:

Inside this boar’s a hound.

Inside the hound a rabbit.

Inside the rabbit a grey dove.

Inside the dove

At the end of poetry the poem can no longer be remote