To my surprise
the more guns I fired
the more I liked it

I was good
I found the center every time
I took aim at time

My stillness was lethal

It wasn’t the smell of gun powder—
but the strange sense of distance

The hunter came out of me
the avenger appeared
the killer neared

I raised a revolver
and called the world a liar

The cabinet was always locked.
A kid should not touch a gun.
I’d gaze through the glass
Hunting in forbidden forests.

The rifles standing at attention,
The wood figuring and inlays artistic,
A deer with antlers in reeds,
The walnut almost burning.

The cabinet taller than the room,
My reflection in the glass
Shot between the eyes with wonder
Through the iron sights of time.

Words are ghosts in the machinery
As signifiers they are the coins
Of economy reaching through time
The qualia of consciousness
Swarming around the mind
Clutching the shoreline of being
One by one, I learn another
And my debt grows larger
My depth deepens with difference
The ghosts continue to appear
They are present in everything I do
And I leave them behind as I go
Owing more than I could show

It’s something special,
almost spectral
when clouds pass
and trees flood with light,
almost tropical green
against a dark sky,
as though, in the blink of an eye,
I am present in another world.

Your aunt’s smiling face,
Your uncle’s hand
Passing a phone receiver through the space
Like a voice from the other side.

For prolonged periods
There is nothing but half a calendar,
Half a clock
And the feet of Jesus
On the far kitchen wall–
Empty space
And the bottom half of time.

Not even a vanishing point
Only the empty face of time
Through such a small space.

An arched passage,
Like the shrine
Of an invisible saint,
To whom I offered
Long afternoons of my childhood.

The wind is a word which needs the earth
To make it speak
It contains so much time
It can explode through the trees
And devastate communities
It can kill power lines
And dispute with oceans
Such a small word
Almost without a vowel
Almost you would think a stone
In the middle of a desert
Not the swirling sweeping air around it

The glass tree has shattered
The inside is growing out
Leaf-shards lay in ruins
Vines produce crystal grape clusters
That fracture at a touch

The door to nature is open
Creation careens off cultivation
A glass sun seeds an unknown ground

Cut-glass is green
The roof glazing azure
The open light opens all the more

I would step inside
But the tree is still shedding
And splinters of light
Might infect me with eternity

You’re not dying at all, life is rushing in
birds fly through the glass unhurt
the blueness bathes you in spirit waters
the leaves are laughing with you
shadows have names you’ll learn in time

This is what we’ve been taught wrong
repeating over and over in song
dying is the abundance I’m beholding
not a body I’m withholding
but the transparency of life unfolding

Nothing is so still as a dead fawn.
Not even a stone can lie so still
Or draw all the light in the forest
To its own sad and resting self.
Infant of the woods, hooved angel,
Newborn of silence, spotted sister
Of death’s meadow, child of Artemis,
Now gentler than ever,
Now more attentive than the stars.