Unburnable The Cold is Flooding Our Lives

the prophets are alive but unrecognizable to us

as calligraphy to a mouse  for a time they dragged

long oar strokes across the sky    now they sit

in graveyards drinking coffee forking soapy cottage cheese

into their mouths  my hungry is different than their hungry 

I envy their discipline but not enough to do anything about it      

I blame my culture   I blame everyone but myself   

intent arrives like a call to prayer and is as easy to dismiss      

Rumi said the two most important things in life were beauty

and bewilderment this is likely a mistranslation 

after thirty years in America my father now dreams in English     

says he misses the dead relatives he used to be able to visit in sleep 

how many times are you allowed to lose the same beloveds

before you stop believing they’re gone

some migrant birds build their nests over rivers    

to push them into the water when they leave   this seems

almost warm   a good harm   the addictions

that were killing me fastest were the ones I loved best 

turning the chisel toward myself I found my body

was still the size of my body  still unarmored as wet bread  

one way to live a life is to spend each moment asking

forgiveness for the last     it seems to me the significance

of remorse would deflate with each performance  better

to sink a little into the earth and quietly watch life unfold      

violent as a bullring    the carpenter’s house will always be

the last to be built   sometimes a mind is ready to leave

the world before its body  sometimes paradise happens

too early and leaves us shuddering in its wake   

I am glad I still exist  glad for cats and moss

and Turkish indigo    and yet   to be light upon the earth 

to be steel bent around an endless black  to once again

be God’s own tuning fork    and yet  and yet