S T A V K I R K (Church of Staves) on the Island

a wooden Norwegian church,
dating from the 12th Century



Independence Day.
While the islanders
watch pagan fireworks
at the ball field, we pilgrims
seek an evening of prayer
in this stern viking church.
So strange to find this
medieval pagoda,
this tribute to conversion
of those Norse raiders,
here, under a glade
of maples where no ship
or shore or savage wind
meet. It is as stark
and unadorned as a
reformer's creed,
a Jerusalem Bible open
on a lectern, and folding
chairs, and suspended
from the rafters, like
some deus ex machina,
an empty sailboat
in the breathless
nave honoring a woman
who died too young.
Hard to imagine
a loving god here
in this frugal, dispassionate
space, hard to pray here,
and hard to seek
redemption or even
rapture in this barren
wood. Outside, as dusk
falls, we walk the garden,
retracing Gethsemane
while the sun sets
in violet and peach
and wine-blood while
the muffled fireworks
explode. In the forsaken
orchard of fruit trees
and wild wheat, juniper
and grackles, swallows
dive into darkness.
We penitents, idolators,
transgressed the coming
night, we pissed on
clover and stirred up
the bumble bees--we
were invaders, renegades,
transplanted evangelists,
zealots seeking, as
we all do, salvation.

ROADKILL ON COUNTY ROAD ZZ

Riding the crowned asphalt
of August and the black pools
of heat mirages, the coarse sand

and wind-burnt junipers,
glades of aspen tongues
gasping in the wind, a land

scorned by god and prophets.
Everywhere there are signs
of failure: bankrupt farms,

belly-up barns and caved-in
shacks, farm houses scrubbed
raw and ramshackled,

orchards swollen with weeds
and bees and rotting fruit, traces
of roads swallowed by scrub.

As I crest Watersend hill
and coast into the valley
I spot the three black vultures--

big, bold and savage in their
reality, working a carcass
in the road. As I approach

they stiffen, indignant,
their ancient filled with disgust,
their cold eyes perturbed

by my insistent wheels.
Finally, as I rush upon them,
they bolt from the road in

slow savage wingbeats.
There on the ghost line
lay the remains of their

complaint: a deer head
no bigger than my fist,
fresh blood and splintered

bone spilt on the asphalt,
the head perfectly untouched,
glassy eyes staring, the body

obliterated. I ride by,
innocent of this grisly
murder, yet somehow stained

by the act of witness
as the vultures circle overhead
and swoop back down

to refresh their appetites,
this land is unrepentant,
like so much of us, it's best

to keep pedaling in the heat,
wipe the stinging sweat
from your eyes, and find

salvation somewhere, in
water, or god, or, if nowhere
else, some scavenger of love.

DEPARTURE

As the ferry turns
in the harbor, a Russian
mother chats on her cell,
her kids giggling at the gulls
laughing in their own
Russian gibberish, at our
sudden uneasy buoyancy,
we are all drunkards,
Karamazovs freed from the
certainty of the shore's
firm language.

As we slide past the jetty
a cormorant spreads his black wings:
an omen! We enter Death's Door,
a terrible passage! Who will
place coins on our slavic
tongues? Who will carry us
to the island of dreamers
and lotus eaters, the lyrical
sirens and pagans of desire?

CAPE CANAVERAL (on the plane from Kansas City)

Yesterday, on the solstice, we
lay on the shore, sweating
in the cabana's shade, eyes

blistered from the sea's
silver searing, unable to read
or even think, just staring

through squinting slits
at the shimmering,
we spoke of physics,

my son and wife and I,
he described crystallized
miracles, carbon-fiber

ladders that would stretch
into space beyond the sweep
of satellites, gossamer

threads like elevators,
spider silks to the skies!



We lay there mesmerized
by the elemental, the heat,
the waves, the blinding

light until, exhausted,
we could take no more science.
We ran across the sand

to wade in the sea's warmth.
We spread ourselves in that
lavish wet bewilderment!,

that gentle world, where
our sunburnt lips tingled
in the brine, and watched

the ancient birds dive
among us, where jellyfish
billowed in the wind, and

we floated there, three
bodies open to the sky
like buoyant starfish,

free from the mind's
gravity, just floating,
as if consciousness itself

were suspended there
in a vast ocean of being,
waiting for the great

rising.

CUANDO CUANDO CUANDO

Why do you remember her, that
Cuban woman singing Cuando cuando cuando
in the October night? That Bayside club
of mojitos and limes and sweet plantains,
sitting at the water's edge,
dipping your hand into the warm
darkness, the moon ghost haunting
the gulf and its smell of monkfish
and crabshells on the wind, her voice
filling the evening's sadness
with a desire you can only possess,
a yearning from somewhere ancient
and familiar, an insinuation, something
deeper, cuando cuando cuando,
how her bracelets slink and shimmy
as she sings, her mango skin, cuando,
how the needlefish nibble your fingertips,
the tingling sting of delight,
how there's nothing more
to say but to let the feeling come, that
temptation, cuando, her singing,
her arms calling out cuando cuando cuando,
the sheer feeling of feeling itself,
and when she calls you must feel
that feeling, you are alive, loving
love more than you can ever stand,
the fullness of that loss, that emptiness,
that fear: giving in to that song
like a shell held to the ear,
innuendos and intimations,
inklings and whispers,
the lyric of divine anguish.