Some sheets of pastry are so thin
You could write a holy scroll.
Know yourself, your stable, the mare,
Know the meadow and the foal.

My child was so thirsty, she wanted to drink
The orange sky, the birds singing,
Everything she could see, she wanted
Every marching toy, every evening,

Who could, who would, stop her, who
Would set aside her gaze, when
All the roads rolled before her,
The universe’s citizen.

“How long can we stay here? Twenty minutes? A day?”
“Maybe a minute. And never forget.”
The ceiling fan whirled and wiped
Away the smoke of the cigarette.

Say you will do something, or never
Do something, and you will recall--
(How you knew that God is the ground
Of the world. The silent fall

Of snow.) Sometimes your life itself
Improves what you thought you knew
(The silent blue never-ending
Stream.) reflect, release, undo--

And sometimes it all was true (the days
You saw what you never saw
Again) because we are just brutes,
(And drunkards take the place of awe.)

That is what you are, you know,
Lemon meringue is air and eggs,
And you are body and soul, a brain
That rides on top of scissoring legs,

And that’s what you make: a swirl of soul,
A swirl of chocolate brown, it seems
The most natural thing in the world, maybe
Because we are stones and streams,

At any rate, these hybrid creatures
Lurch or soar and heaven calls
To earth, soil stirs to sky,
And the air churns into squalls.

And when you mix together soil
And water, bread and air, you get
A living light, a globe that speaks,
A form—we see the silhouette,

A song that lights the boulevard,
A light that clings to soft and hard,
Blue dye, the sea, the sky and crystal
Blue bind into the avant-garde.

The Roman road blended stone
And gravel. you meet your soul on the road,
And dense fog that wraps around
Its feet that might in time corrode.

The two call each other, and you create
A wobbling figure of words or paint,
A nudibranch flicking light,
A universe of light and restraint,

A valley in Michigan flowing with sun,
A songbird whose head has a scarlet crest,
The lightning flows and twists into stars,
The snail, the sea and the sky are blessed,

A sapphire sky blazing above
Key West, all there in that whirlwind
Of words, all there in that splatch
Of paint, the soil, the tamarind.

I do not see the moon. Chomp!
The earth swallowed it. The earth,
With all its mathematicians and
Construction workers. With mirth,

Every night, it swallows the sun,
How merry, all my little insights
Swallow the planetarium.
Never mind, my blatherskites,

Here’s a string of pearls that cost
A pretty penny. As much as Madison
Avenue. Sought by the
Discerning mind, oblivion

Seems to be everything else.
Everything in the room is set
In its right place, every table
Cloth and every serviette.

The first concept, the first sense:
Whatever is more than what it seems,
And more than that, beyond thoughts,
Feelings, formulas or dreams,

Is more life, the more we cling
To that which is beyond clinging
When speaking to a child, when signing
A check, facing a new morning,

The sight of a lean cat crossing
The road can radiate orange, the cat
Doesn’t know, but you know who made
The cat—not just you, but all that

You are first attached to. Whatever
Is brighter will be stronger. Whatever
Streams from the source will fly, we
Will add to that—that’s our endeavor.

He (you? me?) should know
What you have—are—you are walking through
Your own arteries, they are pulsing, pounding,
God is here, don’t eschew

Your own Lembeh Straits, the long
Shallow waves rolling up
To Bali, an unending yearning,
A rest in the cantillation trop,

That sea allows the fish to seek,
When you walk there, you are refreshed,
And light enters everywhere,
From the Gra and from the Besht,

Into everything you do,
(Every transaction,) the light through the soul,
When everything is light, when the sea
Comes to satiate the shoal.

(What is the purpose of prayer? And what
Does it mean to be close to God?) at any
Rate, the flowers orient
Themselves to the sun, many

Times throughout the day, (there are men
Who yearn for the sun, men who go blind,)
There are lights that we yearn for but do not see,
For a park we imagine but do not find.

When you’re busy screwing in light bulbs, you cannot
See their light (that magically
Goes on at dusk), but that is just
(Another type of) apogee

His feelings were filled with God. When he
Was checking his tires, when he filled
His mind with concepts, acted, fed
The poor, he was unfulfilled.

He wanted to be the sputtering blaze
Of the fuse—even though
It wasn’t true—for if it were,
Then everywhere the light would flow,

And when he learned, wisdom would play--
But it came from being true,
Water is water, from river and
From reservoir, and he—and you?--

Will do all right. In the end,
Trust. Only one can help,
One’s enough, nothing left,
Just a rock and a whelp.