Unmarked Boxes

Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round

in another form. The child weaned from mother's milk

now drinks wine and honey mixed.

God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,

from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.

As roses, up from ground. Now it looks like

a plate of rice and fish, now a cliff

covered with vines, now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open.

Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep

and changes shape. You might say, Last night

I was a cypress tree, a small bed of tulips,

a field of grapevines. Then the phantasm goes away.

You are back in the room.

I don't want to make anyone fearful.

Hear what's behind what I say.

Tatatumtum tatum tatadum. There is the light gold of wheat

in the sun and the gold of bread made from that wheat.

I have neither. I am only talking about them,

as a town in the desert looks up

at stars on a clear night.