quarks
floating

in the expanding universe
of empty space
within an atom, Adam

and Eve stood
like sentient, colorless-liquid
trees growing oak roots
and fleshy bark,

beholding,
as particles like waves took shape,
as worlds formed around them--

Salty-white-tipped,
the-blue-of-depth colored water;
cool earth-striped rock-browns;
small silk-like flower petals
reflecting the sun selectively,
not like rain; bold-barked
trunks rooted and holding out
leaves to keep time in the wind.

All these things,
but nothing remained.

Just a flash of a mountain
before it fell into the sea.

Just a glimpse of the sun
before it dissipated and left
darkness mulling in its place.

Only Adam and Eve
were still, until motion,
like rippling puddles or rippling
continents, pulled them
from the ground.

Roots took the shape
of fins and paws and feet.
And then, they stood alone
like weeds, lonely growing.

They named each thing
and stilled it, creation creating

creators--new beholders,
Grand and small.

Words were like skin
to keep them from spilling
together again and drowning,

to keep the world
from evaporating.

Each thing,
now named,
stood sad and
separate
and beautiful.

Motion moved on, and feet
walked the earth over sounds
and smells and words like
ground and shore and hill.

Hands gathered
food from the earth,
innocent child and
passionate love-maker.

But they grew tired of walking
among beasts,
they grew tired of gathering.

So they stopped, and they dug
into the soil with sharpened,
unwilling things.

The soil bled and blood fed
hungry mouths, but the piercing
proved too much.  The myriad

of yellow and purple and red
flowers wilted and turned
to thorny stems, dry and dead.

All the green-grass
browned and turned to stone.

Adam’s hands callused
from moving the rock,
and Eve’s bled when pricked
by thorn, but they built a home.
 
 

II.
The Birth of God and
Justice Like Sand Castles

Among homes
of thatched knotted wood
cut, by storming hands,
from trees that lived once
and grew, rooted,
while worlds formed;

among blankets
of animal hide ripped
from bodies, breathing-homes,
to house bodies,

ripped by the hand-
tide encroaching;

among fields
of hand-herded plant-
stalks and fruit shaped
like different tastes,
different thoughts;

among beasts,
wordy, slouching,

each the center
of the web (invisible,
so large);

among all things
witnessed
and the cage-bars
of time

(lines drawn
by simple eyes
through the gaseous
grandeur of motion);

Moses--
gray, blind
(yes, blind),
and brave--
brought word

that God had been born.

Separate and formed,
God, the man-shaped

eye of the storm, He,
upon his birth, demanded
that sentience be cherished
by those who could cherish.

“Sentience is
our father,” he said.
His voice hardened liquid.
“Me, our sum and source.”

But the shoe-footed
hearers used different
words to recount.

“I am the Father,” they said
he said.  “Cherish me.”

The cherishing began,
and the words, once skin,
grew separate from things.

They floated in
and out of ears
and mouths, tinting
eyes, convincing
eyes to see by the code

of children, to be satisfied
with the authority
of story long ago told.

Certain words
and certain stories
of fools and of sacrifice
were carried
on tongues, swift
to spring forth
from spark to flame.

But few ears listened
unless for heritage
or from pain.  Most

listened to growls
as humans, like other animals,
fought and foamed at mouths over
land and carcasses.

Those who suffered
little spoke sweetly
and concerned themselves with justice
like children with sand castles.
 
 

III.
The Annunciation and
the Birth of a Young Crow

Among sand-
gurgling growls,
Virgin Mary spun
in a half shell upon
a puddle of sea--a top
on naked-feet tip-toes.

Her hair grew like ivy
along stone; then,

through gray light shone
beams that rode diving
wings like star-thrown spears.

The winged beams appeared
to the senses a symphony
of screams to virgin ears.

The panting stream
of angels bore with Mary
a union of separates.

Mary, innocent child
and passionate love-maker,
bit her lip upon contact
with the tyrannical angels
sent by her Father, extension
of her Father.

Her tongue danced
in blood that flowed,
passing sweaty thighs
and painting toe-nails

red.  She bled
forth a bridge-child.
 
 
 

IV.
The Life of Christ and
the Image of Whoever

Jesus, young bird,
brought love, a rusty cage
door falling off its hinges
to reveal:  sky, blue
or black, does not exist
just between bars.

He brought love like pain
of pushing from womb
to world--

the plate-tectonic
teeth-grinding of
innocent woman in labor,

the waking and chaos
of child falling from warm,

blissful Eden of senses
to cold, expansive expulsion--

Eden shaped
like the rest of the world.

He brought love like light
before words.

This love flew straight
over curvy roads--a crow

who makes a mockery
of those who travel
grudgingly, but a mockery
in the traveler’s eyes
not in the crow’s.

This bird--void
of judgment, a mirror-- reflected
the image of whoever
looked up.
From fear, lookers shouted
and threw stones
to waver the bird’s course.

But the feathered
metaphor persisted.

There were eyes
that teared, seeing
the bird flying in a cloud
of plucking words and stones;

there were minds
that thought, “Nowhere
may we remain.”

But mouths
just screamed
at the animal,
arms flung things
at the animal;

for it could fly,
and they could not.

Pitying stone-throwers,
the crow came to earth
and was caught,

in a thorny net
woven from the skin
of those killed for flying.
 
 

V.
The Crucifixion and
Heavy Blue Wool

Mary, mother and giver,
clasped her hands in prayer
as the fingers of her Father
drove nails into the flesh
of their child, flung at him
unwilling stones

of convention.

She kneeled as the wretched
red mouths of her Father
spit at their son
rusty saliva, afraid.

She cried out in the voices
of spontaneous beasts,
in the voices of trimmed grass,

cried out to God, strong-
handed father lover.

Her cry was echoed
through cage-bars and clay huts,
into towns and through streets.

Her cry surrounded
mansions and knocked
gently on doors.
Her cry was love.

But when the doors opened,
her flesh face faded
to statue, to painting.

She was pulled from the earth,
pulled by clean, plotting hands
from her own womb,
from her tomb
boulder-sealed and sacred.

Her embalmed body was
draped in heavy blue
wool garment drenched
in purple jewels with
thorns underneath
that poked through

and scraped
her memory of skin.

She grew oak roots
in the floor of Heaven

and held imageless ground
that awaited pillage and plunder,
ground watered by tears.
 
 

VI.
The Vulgate and
Fire for Heat

Flame-shaped stories
of meekness and bravery
swirled on rolled out tongues

before they were captured
and minted like coin,
hard, still, one-shaped,

and warm.  Their heat
was then craved

by those who spoke them
and jingled them in their purses.

Soon, speakers claimed
the words, the coins,
for glory, a new thing
named.

Scared to share,
they locked them
in a heavy, bounded book.

Animals still, they hoarded.

The words no longer leapt
from each to each, no longer
grew rooted on rock-piles-
under-green-blanket summer
mountains, in bald-pasture valleys,
near water-tempted beaches,
reaching skyward.  The words

were guarded
and chopped
and splintered
and spread thinly
among the masses
to be burned for heat.
 
 

VII.
The Second Coming and
Chess Pieces Packaging

Intricate ivory chess pieces crept
over lonely squares below
rooted Mary.

She clung to a heaven
losing its placeness.

Ivory kings
and knights and pawns
hunted each other
below her
with growing and shrinking guns,
always better and always worse.

Ivory chess pieces aflame,
they only added fuel
to fire as they moved.

Burning kings sent burning
knights and pawns to kill
each other for chance,

to shatter flaming ivory for a chance
to rape Mary’s blue-clad corpse.

Lifting up the jewel
speckled wool, they
were careful not to prick

themselves on the thorns
underneath
hiding like bitterness can
behind a smile.

Getting what they had come
for, they tried not to
soil her gown,

so that it wouldn’t stink
when they bowed
before it on Sunday.

“Dear God,” sorrowfully
whispered Mary,
each rape a driving nail.

Her wheezy words weltered
in the flesh of His long-
personified body, but He
did not answer.

A stray
bullet, and He lay
lecherous,
wrapped in cellophane.

It happened so fast,
thought Mary.  He was
murdered and packaged
a million times before
I even noticed.

He seemed to be
dying, forgotten
by heroes, forsaken
by dissection.

But Mary’s roots
kept her from moving,
the raping kept her
from caring.

She looked back, longingly,
through a broken stain-glass

window to see Man and
Woman, Jesus and
ragged claws scuttling.

She saw her own
figure as a child--

spinning on tip-toes,
her hair like kudzu
along a highway.

She dipped her blue-of-depth
colored, root-webbed hand

into the image, a reflection
on smooth-water, surface tension.

Ripples circled outward
from her arm and her image,
and she pulled
from the primordial,

womb-water
a prophet, to fly

from this crowded deck
and put breath in the sails

of our ship wandering
in this gust of wind, existence.
 
 

VIII.
Searching and
the Crystal Shard

God, manifest
in everything searching,

in every hand
feeling its way
over furniture in the dark,
along wooden hoe handles,
over the skin of a lover,
to a river or a trigger;

in every nose
that loves one smell
over another,

that loves one smell
for the pool
to be jumped in,
that it ignites in all senses,

in every ear
and mouth tasting
the passion-fruit

sounds of music
or of hearts beating;

in every eye beholding;

in all these things
that seem to remain,

God finds new stones
and more spit,

and flesh, again,
will part like seas
for sacred nails.

Mary, again, will cry
out to God who is
scattered like seeds
on a forest floor

and staggering paths away
in all directions
from a clear crystal shard

that reflects each outward
moving figure as if they walk
inward toward its vast
and empty center.