In the Fullness of Time

In the fullness of time
when these rolling premonitious eyes
are sealed shut
and this mouth corked
the heart in its canopic jar of earth
endlessly rocking
feet facing west head east and
face like a flower furled
and the eagle flies slowly past casting
its cold eye
and the oceans rising

In the fullness of time when
velvet ceases to speak to its wearer
hair no longer falls over shoulders
buttons no longer go through their suitable slits
wheels cease to rotate
and no one’s feet quite reach the pavement
and owls cry over vacant lots where
papers blow making that
blowing paper sound that wrinkles
space into time and time into
space and crickets
fiddle to no one

Where we go on because we must
with our loose sail hanging at the mast
into that volatile mist
making out the namesake of He Who has
made all this
each glint of pin in the air
each pin of air whose point stabbed through
nothingness makes every something stir
each anywhere

Earth a ball that rolls on its own in space
whose waters stick to it and thick clouds
cushion it
like a sunbeamed jewel heading endlessly
home in the
fullness of time
leaving us out of it

Oh God so far out of it after our
mortal involvement with it
strong-arming its ratchets and its gears
its circles and its squares
we always at the point of liftoff or the
point of pushed down
among its cypress lawns

In the simple fullness
with no time at all
when the sublime simply
takes over
and leaves this life blind and that one
fully sighted as if
for the first time

O shield us with Your Compassionate
stream

and wake us from this
rock salt dream of men and their fine

moan

and take us endlessly
home

---

10/28/2007 (from The Sound of Geese Over the House)

Categories: Poems