Golden hill,
you sit humbly on my lap,
my lap that is the grassy thigh of the earth,
though my smaller human body
sits here in this blue room,
where i’ve made my table an altar,
where celestite and quartz shine with white sunlight,
i’ve placed two feathers before the window
facing you.
I’ve collected rocks from an
old ancient hill that once spoke
to me of heaven on Earth,
and i’ve placed them on this altar.
I have sage and a green candle,
and a string of seashells that belonged to my mother.
She had these before I dreamed myself into her womb.
My favorite deep blue scarf is
the carpet to the altar.
As i sit here writing,
i am placing all
these objects against the
backdrop of the deep blue sky.
Every white dot of the scarf
is a star staring back at me.
Am i writing traces against the night?
Am i a letter writer to the cosmos?
Are the stars reading what I write?
Looking up out the window,
the celestial clouds and blueness
have been painted by angels of light.
How else could I describe it?
I’ve created this altar for you,
golden hill before me,
resting against the gates of heaven.
I’ve created this altar
for the leaves at the end of their life,
for the brave orangeness of the mountains
how the whiteness of frost kisses cosmic bodies above.
I hope my act of writing is sacred enough,
to be here,
facing you.
I write like I do prayer.
I am here with my pen,
and I am in ceremony.
Rivers of luminescent awe
pour through the top of my head,
I’m bathed in these droplets.
I feel wings sprout from my shoulder-blades,
and they rest against my back,
I feel more like myself like this,
staring out-
my mind is empty for you.
What do my wings mean?
Are they white, copper or gold to you?
They might look white to the clouds,
and gold to you, dear hill.
I wonder if these wings make me an angel,
or even more of a human,
I wonder if there even is a difference,
or am I speaking of the same life form?
My wings spread open.
I try to grasp for new words
with my feathers,
new ways to be in devotion
new ways of prayer through pen,
i am wordless,
yet i think myself a poet.
Maybe I am more of
an ecstatic devotee of you,
life.
Life in a hill before me.
I see all of life in the rocky,
sweet autumn hill before me.
The candle wavers,
and everything else remains
still in my body.