After Matthew 26:52 Blood streaks splatter across moonbeamslike a pearl-string snatched from a virgin’s neck:the ear of a guard, hacked off, falling down to dustto

Pride be not deathfor as I’vestretched to reach out from thesebrambles to cut away the vinesabout my ankles to step out on thispromontory you swell

After Marc Chagall’s “Sarah and Abimelech” What kind of fool flings his wife to another manas if tossing a meaty shank to a drooling wolf,thinking

I play the part of an earthboundstone   you   the part of the moon in this silent   ceaseless   standoffAs a rock   an oversized pebble I’m kicked along some

The fear of the Lord is Zion’s treasure. — Isaiah 33:6 Beyond eager to bear witness to the miracle of compounding, I have deposited,Lord, my

Harlem Cultural Festival, 1969 As though Eve herself,in all her intricate glory,electrified once again the rib, as though her twin lungs, rumblingwith divine breath,let loose,

“Go, some summer evening, to that hallowed place, where your thoughts so readily run back over the past, and so willingly entertain the hopes of

Take the globe by her imaginedcorners & stretch her flatlike evening against the skyBlow your trumpets angelsto stir our souls& stir bodies that have died

Once, before children, my wifeand I took a nest of fledglingsto a woman who rehabbed wildlife.I remember the “No” that creasedher face when asked if