We spoke wine-press “purple words”
Blending with wine-makers’ voices
Splashing purple across work floors.

“Blue words” kept the world aloft,
Like branch, bird, cloud and water…
Like time, spirit, celestial and divine…

“Green words” grew among us like grapes
And sang the sun’s green gratitude
For smoke and rain, twilight and dreams.

The “black words” we saw in color
Were indigo buntings in a magic forest
Or like fish that swallow moonlight.

Only at the entrance to the underworld
Are the unforgiving fluent in ash,
Though the words are dowsed in past light.

Keep me awake one minute beyond those I love
That I may guide them safely through dark doors
Keep me awake one minute beyond first light
Like an after-image of light eternal
Don’t shut my eyes unless sleepless I depart
Sleepless arrive where sleepless I embarked
Don’t close my hands before I touch the last wave
Don’t bind my feet until the dance is slowing
Don’t cover my mind before it pictures its dream
Don’t bury me before I write my grave
Or stop my blood until it flies in birds
Don’t let the wind blow into my mouth
Before my spirit steps into its spaces

Such a thin reed for so round a whistle–
I stop inside myself inside the fog.
I look around, owl-like.
Past and present meet.
The future calls from the street.
In all places I think
it is like this at times,
a wavering moment
in which something endures.