Before the falling taut, the blast. And next 

the fire with human hands collects a kill 

and offers meat to test what strength I’ve saved —

pinned butterflies inside until the end —

I know the flesh unblessed. But reach to eat.

*

Fingers gnawing toward a lie find brittle 

stems still nimble. Layers of mountain green

my eye, blue on blue, flowering into 

hills, a last canopy, as cirrus trill, 

erasing themselves. I can’t be a cloud.

*

I kept my fingers tight inside my ears 

to keep their fight outside my head. Smoking, 

drunken, they’d swear. Swaddled, in ghostly light, 

I’d sweat in blankets summer nights, seeking

my place, a quiet, dark circumference.

*

I watch a maple whirlibird twirl by 

miracle and muscle. Five times I’ve brought 

the future on too soon or held the past 

too long. Samaras, these helicopters, 

pelt me. I hold my breath and tigers bloom.

*

The sun returns unchanged. Coconuts drop

or circumvent, but you are different.

Tourists squawk, parrots talk, and my question

waits unattended. Straw, jitneys, and conch —

you decide to wander. I shop and shop.  

*

Night reprieves the shore, and lovers struggle 

to see stars through muggy air, Jupiter

bright, brighter than Betelgeuse ever was.

Afterward, the sky receded from us.

Once home again, we flattened specimens.

Three ladies in slick bee hives

are my loves supreme.

They sway the smooth hip,

tip a gesture to the sky.

Burning, yearning, turning, hurts.

You don’t owe me the rest of —

like silk in a knot,

ohh, baby, baby — your life.

Reading a stranger’s obituary, I think of the many conventions she had in her life as insurance against
despair: husband, children, grandchildren. But things are not as they appear. Yesterday, my mother
showed me her daily Bible verse: “We fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen.” One of
her favorites, she said. I suppose she got a lot of practice in that trick by living with my dad. And while I
have been writing, the oatmeal boiled over on the stove. This is how it is for us, back and forth, back
and forth. The pot on the stove, the living.

My mother left her blood

in her Bible,

spilled from agèd hands

like wine from old vines.

It stained the Book of Job 

when God’s talking.

Most of the blood smear

covers for ever.

Dab a drop of water,

and a sermon

washes over me —

how little I know.

In the lion Samson slayed,

a honeycomb buzzed.

He ate bees with his honey.

Designed to hold the Baptist’s bones, 

this empty gold monstrance 

lost its jewels to Napoleon

on his way to steal the Rosetta stone.

On islands, someone must leave or return—

in the fourteenth century 

the last Grand Master fled Malta, packing

relics of St. John. The Baptist’s wrist 

and arm bones proved poor omens:

In Paris, Jacques de Molay was burned. 

On this rock a month, I’ve waded

long lines to tour the Grand Master’s Palace;

bright armor and weaponry intrigue me

less than this vessel’s emptiness.

By the ninth century, St. John’s bones had 

traversed east to west, Antioch to Constantinople. 

Gifted to the abbey of Citreaux, they paused in France, 

before moving on to the Knights Hospitallers 

of Jerusalem and Rhodes, thence the relics’ arrival 

in Valetta, to St. John’s red cross of Malta.

Like Byron, I won’t be sorry to leave heraldry

and endless bells pealing in my wake.

When I thought my return ticket to Rome canceled,

I fell to my knees in supplications.

In St. John Co-Cathedral, I stand before 

Caravaggio’s dying prophet, angel, forerunner,

first cousin who greeted the Lord womb to womb,

whose father was struck dumb, tongue

only loosed at his birth. An ornate platter 

awaits the saint’s thought matter,

his scarlet garment as garish

as the blood seeped from his throat.

It’s 2009, and I doubt many things

about myself, but in this moment, I behold

until I’m scuttled out by a guard, though 

the velvet ropes corral no other tourists.

In all my travels, waters of seas in which 

I’ve splashed have entered my cells, exchanging, 

yet there is only one place each person finally rests:

I’ve never proved proof to myself.

I think about taking a year to walk

the labyrinth of scattered bones.

In 2010, on a speck off the Bulgarian coast, 

a marble altar box yields fragments

of the Baptist’s skull, jaw, arm, and tooth.

His head turns up in Munich, a hand

in Montenegro, a portion in Egypt, too. 

After de Molay met his stake,

the saint’s translation did not slack. 

Back to the Ottomans John’s right arm flew,

to a reliquary commissioned by Knights, 

where it now waves from deep time’s flight.