The Caged Bear Spies the Angel $20

Hitting Bulls Eye

In memoriam Shaykh Mansur Escudero

Marked from the start as one who would
fly from the taut bowstring and

hit bulls eye
cutting through every air

Who would distribute sweet heartbeats with
every encounter

on Pasha mountainpeak or dustbowl
OK Corral

Closing gaps wherever they appear
and opening them in some places

God-blessed from the start but making no
show of it

in horse-dust rising around us all or
star-silver sprinkling through the trees we

stand among

Both passenger and boatman
oarsman and overseer

Marked from the start by indescribable processes
to stand or sit among us in

pure blessedness
as if leaning from a sublime dimension

into our own

Whose death is more an appearance among us
free of all uncertainty

leaving in us a sense of our own
blessedness

expanding that dimension
into our own

with an amber glow of interstellar light

showing the path trod
and the goal engraved

Arrow of the straight shot
and the clean arrival

Marked from the start as one who would
sing at the taut bow’s release

across the intervening air
and hit bulls eye

God’s open Eyes
closed around him now

10/16/2010 (from The Caged Bear Spies the Angel)

Siren at Night

Why is it a siren at night sounds like
someone crying for help

or else despairing of help?

Why is it the city at night is like a
single person with disturbed sleep

generally peaceful but now and then
thrashing from side to side

and yelling out
under the imponderable stars?

Tonight perhaps one person in this entire city’s made the
permanent breakthrough into an undying

spectacular radiance that would
light up any number of national

wonders like the Grand Tetons or even
New York itself

yet no one might know of it
but his caged bird or his

insouciant cat
curled up asleep under the chair of epiphany

in the roofless room of the
Divine Presence

whose doors and windows have
exploded with light

Now there’s another siren across town
speeding to its dutiful appointment

and I pray for safe outcome
surrounded by voices of

sweet council and high jubilation
and the newly ascended saintly one might also

be hearing it with me and be
flying to the scene in the Unseen

to see by God’s pure Seeing
what should be done

and by no action of his own

doing it

1/1/11 (from The Caged Bear Spies the Angel)