Night Templates

Night Templates________________________

1.

When walls were struck from the sea,
we, buried and hidden in virgin matter
untended, were trumped by enormous waters
thundering seminal waves into the solar vortex.

Now on a wet hillock where ritual is borne
the Priesthood of Patmos encase
the apparitions of God:
robing and girding sarcophagus forms

in a deluge of dust. Wanting the wind,
we structure instead
seven chambered
honeycombs.


2.

We call this place the Valley of God,
where the earth in cupping shape
holds vapors like incense in the temple.
Here is Adam’s grave, his cage of speech
beneath where the leaves rot.
No one recalls white doeskin testimony.
No one mentions the cupping shape of this womb.

3.

We conceive
the white pleated passage into night.
We take a timorous approach
and keep a folded fig leaf behind the altar of prayer.
Our desires climax and pulse wet above the quasars.
We bury our atonement in the sand.

The incessant swarm of death
ruptures our street visions
sacks the Alexandrian library
breaks the wooden cart in its flight
and peals the flesh off our unworthy bones.