God the Man watches his children.
“She is alone.”
“He is alone.”
“That one, too, is alone.”
“There is no comfort for my children,”
He thinks.

It is the time of no time
For God the Man.
He is the city and its people.
Its elders, ruddy young men,
And budding women. Kiss, smile,
And play, his children.
All that is good is God the Man.

There is something like death in it.
… and the gift of new birth wrapped in ribbons of a waking sun.

There is sadness.
There is redness.
When the heart grasps at empty air
Like a forlorn babe.

Finality was a face once like ice.
It will melt into grace.
It, too, sheds cold tears.

I cup my hands like a bowl for its water.
And wash my eyes with it.

(He wrote so carelessly)

You are the parched breath of my lonely desert
And the sand that cuts like broken crystal
And the blinding empyrean.

The denizens of the village deride my wandering.
I bear no witness to their pale mockery
Filled to bursting as I am with your emptiness.
Your mute song fills my ears
With flute and tambourine.

Only when I thirst
Will thirst become my compass
And your oasis will I chance upon
And suckle on your nothingness.

Each day is hard, my Love.
Discomfited by fond memories.
Remember when you laid your head on my lap
As we watched The African Queen?
I smoothed the strands of your hair over your ear
while you slept,
and marveled at your yielding
quiet beauty.

It’s hard not to be happy
When the sun shines
And a troupe of sparrows
Dance a tiny soot brown feather hop
And flit between crumbs and hunger
At my swollen feet.

I watch children play
And poor old men mumble
And stumble over unrequited dreams
While brittle dead leaves gather
In windblown circles at their feet.

Between life and its cruelty,
A respite from spinning clay,
To play with words and talk to God.

I hear your name,
The softness of it.
In dark hours
When I and my restless wandering
Are breached by still waters.

I see your face
And follow it.
Sense your limbs
Swing like pendulums
Through an autumn night’s fog.

I watch your eyes
Circumscribe memories
Of monsters and taboo,
As we swing like children
While all the children sleep.