I go to church every Sunday
though I don‘t believe a word of it，
because the longing for God
is a prayer said in the bones.
When people call on Jesus
I move to a place in the body
where such words rise，
one of the valleys
where hope pins itself to desire；
we have so much landscape like that
you‘d think we were made
to sustain a cry.
When the old men around me
lift their hands
as though someone has cornered them，
giving it all away，
I remember a dock on the estuary，
watching a heron get airborne against the odds.
It‘s the transitional moment that baffles me—
how she composes her rickety
grocery cart of a body
to make that flight.
The pine siskin， stalled on a windy coast，
remembers the woods
she will long for when needs arise； so
the boreal forest composes itself in my mind：
first as a rift， absence，
then in a tumble of words
undone from sense， like the stutter
you hear when somebody falls over the cliff of language. Call it a gift.