Genesis

I.

Eyes fresh with grit,

Witness your lids (antediluvian windowsills fresh from the vine, pluck them

Open like the flaps to a tent, protect your newly bloomed irises with

A gift of light and delicious mist).

Scent the breeze that lifts pigment from the leafy vines. If your teeth savage

The hard flesh of nuts, remember: you were born from a nimble

Will to disintegration. The smallest particles were

Borne from pulverizing hands with a knowledge of their own, a taste of matter that

Endowed them with memories of a non-existent whole so that when he calls

“Where are you?” the dust shivers back:

“Here I am.”

Look:

God begets dust, begets

Duskiness in the womb.

The tender tinder of original ash can

Pull flesh back from the twilight, can  

Coax open the womb, clutched closed like

The infant born with his fingers clasped

(Vault-like) around his brother’s ankles, like newborns who

Palm the good air like it was something to hold.

Count your footsteps as they are. (By a feat of prestidigitation, imagine

The cadence of Gertrude Stein):

One, one, one, (East, east, east).

Sound out the distance that your soles can carry you
Away from that

Breezy time of day.

Do your arches long for the
Gates that mirror their shape?

Just this once, look back;

The warmth of the flaming sword guards your back like sunrise.

II.

Children are harder to raise than dust, their blood

Splashes easily, vividly,

Cries its journey to the ground,

Not quite a psalm.

Human bone splinters too easily for sacrifice, not like

The sawing of horn from

Ram,

you were given horns so you might

Be snared by this bush and meet your end

Dappled in the fragrant juice of berries, coin slot eyes

Emptied for God.

III.

It is not enough to wander. Not enough to

Scatter memory to carrion birds.

Poor raven, perplexed by

The sea that goes on and on,

Unable to find your way, frightened by the

Empty vault of the sky whose maw mocks:

“No food here. No food here,

The flesh has all been swept away.”