Desire

We gather in circles

around the sacred stone,

waiting until the sky

renews the hour of our longing,

waiting until the stone speaks,

then caresses the fields

with blooms of lavender and rose.

The sun disperses clouds,

edges toward the firmament

through a tear in the cobalt dome.

I splatter white paint against it.

Stars sprout from my drippings,

soaring ever higher to new perches.

The brush flings of its own accord.

White spots transmute

into interlocking galaxies,

milky and pink, streaked

with flames of orange. Touching

the boundaries of the self,

constellations urge us upward.

We can escape mortality only

if we recite the everlasting Word,

spoken on the wind. It heals

and renews, revives and succors,

gives hope to the desolate,

dispenses wisdom and the will

to enact it as spiritual discipline.

The Word reshapes our destiny

as the poetics of the blind,

forever silent, save for what is spoken:

transcendent, everlasting, forged

in the fire of our primal longing,

our anguished desire that

echoes off facets of the sacred stone,

which casts its heavy shadow

across layers upon layers

of the morning’s ripened dew.