first light of day inscribed on night’s gravity
sweet breath of noumena between the pines
this is the path of the unconverted
the unwashed
its pentimento showing through 
the blood showing through grass and weeds
briar and brush

I made camp just beyond the pond
where algae live happily in the continuous
loop of their wedding nights
just south of where ravens are already flensing
bodies of the departed and crickets live
with their glassine eyes their lidless black paper
watching the world

all the night shinings go out like candles
two by two certain eyes close while
others open as a breeze braids through
the old growth of this hour sun rising
ur-light giving the sense that everything
is in holy orders that we all live
in the guise of ourselves in a measure
of space under a monk’s caul

pampered bacteria in the leaf mold
dead foxes in their vestments
the grasses’ heart stretching on for miles
swamp water living the life of tea steeped
to intelligence

the cursive heartbeats of everything in synch
like a geothermal cipher warm as a deer’s core
and every footstep we take is just where
the world’s edge dips into infinite space

this morning I walk carefully there knowing
that the husks of dead bees and twigs dust
all the rooms of Paradise that every windfall
apple has come to change the world.