Vermilion Flycatcher Moon

Dearest Light On Water, heartmind collector,

You called in a space within emptiness, a body.

And you sighted it & found a name & set it flying.

The spread black fan of mourning doves.

Without your bright mind—

I don’t know, I don’t know.

There is no flower like you in the snow or desert,

no cinnabar lacquered wood bowl

buried before Buddha in China

near a village by a stream called Tenderness—

There is no way to get beyond, really.

Only gaps & knotholes in the time-fence— glimpses,

delirious momentariness like the familiar mockingbird

changes that serenaded us night & day

within the coolness & heat in which we arrived,

all of it—the flashing wishes—near to hand.

Until the nightflowers gift their evanescent lilt

the world’s senses rasp weak, without air-music—

Beloved, you are a garden of unspeakable sensation

a saguaro bloom vibrating bat tones

a cereus calling all the lonely pollinators.

Moonglass, moonmirror, moonwind,

may I give you these shining displays

to make marks upon, to nectar-dust?

May I bowerbird your gaze & praise

you in a bricolage display of birth & death?

May we catch silhouettes ourselves

out in the clear deep open beyond

& settle down by the fire there

colored red as the molten within.