The angel is angular,
Suspended like light.
Mary turns her face
Up to the window.
Sunlight penetrates
Square corridor of light.
This is the midpoint
Between light and dark.

Between word and image,
A long loneliness.
A seed grows nurtured
In quiet and stillness.
Does Mary know she will
Give birth, to witness outcasts
In line to touch and to gape,
To stare and to hunger?

Spring nurtures hope,
Light lengthening into light.
Autumn sun tapers.
So much of living,
A surrender to light:
As in the wood engraver’s trade
Fritz Eichenberg’s lithographs
Cut to illuminate.

Light enters
the cornea
mysteriously
and scatters
an image
in our mind
as inconspicuously
as the approach
of the angel
in Mary’s room.

Sensing an abrupt
and warm presence,
Mary turns her gaze
to face the angel.
For a moment,
their two faces
like two globes
illuminate each other,
the eyes drawn to the eyes,
eternity suspended
in a moment.
Not since Jacob
wrestled with his angel
was so much splendor
at arm’s reach.
Did she flinch
even for a moment
at the task before her,
at the luminosity around her?

Quite as suddenly,
the angel retreated,
leaving Mary to ponder
what she could never forget
and never quite retrieve:
He is the Icon of the invisible God,
and the firstborn of all creation.

Meeting without touching
like sunlight
on a poppy;
his light
unfolds her petals
and colors her
garnet red fragrance.

Rich velvet blue
encloses her
like a chrysalis
in her waiting.

Halo of birth
and child’s cry,
light shatters
darkness
like a cymbal.

Winter black is my palette.
Shadow on snow.
A woman abandoned by her lover.
Ink on paper.
Winter,
I hunger for color
as if for bread.
The woman I drew in from the cold
poses. I sketch.
Ink on paper.
Winter, I blow on my hands,
coaxing fire.

Spring draws out the interior:
Still life and open windows,
green young corn
and pink apple blossoms.
When a model poses,
my only question
is whether I should start
from the soul
or from the clothes.
Spring is an artist’s brush,
agile and light.
From each bud and leaf
colors brighten.

Autumn is completeness,
round fruit,
ten apples in a basket.
Colors ripen,
yellow leaves and violet tones,
while two laborers rest,
knees touching,
by a haystack.
Autumn
I desired to be a whole,
not one of two halves.
I paint now
without a brush.
Palms, fingers, knuckles
apply the paint
to canvas.
Autumn, I am nothing
except a boyish signature
on a canvas.

We are like aspen,
connected at the root,
joined at the rib
like Adam to Eve,
brother to sister.
The branch of one
connected
to the root of another,
each dependent on the other.
Yet each leaf-vein pattern
spells a trajectory
unique as a fingerprint.
The luminosity
reflected in the stream
is a mirage of gold.
One leaf is a wick.
A forest of aspen
is a living fire
rolling down
the flooded riverbed—
sustained by the deep lungs
of the earth.

Everyday is a little
goodbye, a little
undoing. A child
was knit in
the womb:
Now it’s unraveling.
Take my heart
and spin threads, worlds,
whirring wings.
I am already dizzy
with the undoing.

Let me be the warp
on which you weave,
Whirring Wings.
Let me be
all but invisible,
blank canvas
the brush strokes.
Spin me down
like a top unwinding,
the spindle
coming to rest.

Every day is a little
hollowing, knot
in the wood,
a little less than
before: hope
without anchor
set sail, crossed
the horizon.
Every day is a little
hallowing, holy
haunt of high nesting
bird, perched
in the eaves,
beyond arches
and gargoyles.
Rain swept
the ghastly grins
off the gargoyles.
Shield my soul
now under
Whirring Wings.

Along I-40
stands
a deserted billboard.
Its whitewashed plywood
rectangles have rotted
symmetrically
to expose rectangles of sky:
the pattern of a Navajo rug.

If one light
in the Pleiades
went out,
the rest
would not shine
brighter
for its absence.

The stars shine
no more, no less,
since you are gone.

Near Bluewater,
New Mexico:
Zero visibility
possible.
Or as Paul
would say:
We see through
a glass
darkly.

After great pain,
there is nothing for it
but to seek healing
by entering
the deep womb
of the earth.