His footprints are still there to see

on the stone on the Mount of Olives

where he pushed off, like a power forward

rising to the rebound, to ascend.

 

The mystic traded his penknife

as if to a scalper

to see again the impressed rock

to determine which way the right foot was pointing

and which way the left.  To get out,

he gave away his scissors.

 

Later, the monk waved his staff so much,

the mystic feared a beating.

But it was only a warning not to go where he had been.

 

And it was as if, for the mystic,

Paul’s bright light illumined the road,

and he held onto the monk to avoid falling

from the horse he was not riding,

the moment of ball to bat, solid contact.

 

         And it shall come to pass, all blessings shall come.

         You will be overtaken by joy.

         Blessed will be your city,

         the furrows of your farm fields.

         A holy people. Hearken.

 

         Turn from gods of wood and stone.

 

In the forest, I mourned my brother.

On the arable steppe, I reaped wheat.

I was left sweaty, drained, empty on the dry steppe.

 

Soldiers swarmed the breadlands,

trampling the flat fields of grain,

four horsemen and a hundred.

 

I will give due to the illness he suffered,

but he was more than his sick.

 

He played the game, as each one does.

He knew failure and

the full-feel crunch of a tackle well-made.

 

His blood moved through the body

that held the man

who followed the dry, weak, easy star,

out of fear of other cosmos corners.

 

He gave up joy in moment,

demanding an un-pain always.

He chose un-pain with the gun.

 

He was imbalanced.  He imbalanced himself.

 

He saw the highway out of town,

away from the miserable lessons he was taught,

the wounds he hugged to his chest,

but never took it.

(Brother Elbow and Little Sister poem #18)

We ride the three-seat bike, Brother

Elbow in front, Little Sister in the

middle, and I in the back, frustrated

that clenched-teeth Brother Elbow

goes where he wants and listens not

at all to my shouts over the wind.

Eventually, he and I bore of the

shouting and not listening.  His

control loses its zest, my lack its

angst.  We ride through city streets,

and Little Sister sings a song about

God’s toy and an ache-full ballad of

lost faith and constant love.

(Brother Elbow and Little Sister — 16)

Brother Elbow, Little

Sister and I sit at the

small round table and

look into the black

hole in the center of

the wood, an abyss

without bottom, a

tunnel without arrival,

a cauldron smelling of

gasoline, antiseptic,

chicken curry, mown

grass, shit and the

breath of a six-week

-old baby, a Ouija

board in an unknown

alphabet, a spy photo

of Hiroshima ruins and

the Louvre gardens,

Rosehill Cemetery and

Guaranteed Rate Field,

Gethsemane and Calvary,

a television screen of

Job carping and the

girl singing a song of

sultry songs for her lost

lover, an antelope on

her slopes, and back

to the beginning, the

formless void and the

deep covering all and

every thing.