Life is the Orchid in Direct Sunlight              

        “The very things that make you live are killing you.”
                                             –        Ray LaMontagne

                         “I’ll put/ words in jars like bugs/ to see if they’ll fight.”
                                                                     –         Bernie DeVille

What if we stopped—

For just a moment.  Just a fragment, of celeritous fraction, of an instant?

What if we halted

this procession, this parade, this sharp charade of genuflection

and worldly sight?

What if we spread our thoughts like blankets on the grass
to catch the awkward skies of radiance falling, in our laps?

                                              ***

If there was a balm in Gilead, I would rend it from the wood,
would tap the seeping flow from nails, to know; to really know

but not to pry it from his hands, oh, no.  For nothing ventured,
nothing gained.  Nothing lost, and nothing named.  The cure is

but the stain that gives the heartwood deepest, darkest roots:  That pain
provides the beauty–not the healing, not the meaning, knowledge gleaning

“sacrifice of self reveals the self.”
                                                                ***

Give me charity and vice! A thousand trials!  I’ll pierce my flesh
with needles of this life, that life would gather them, like scattered shells,
 
like abalone shells along a string, these salty bodies strung with gut
and service to a world and to the Self and to experience beyond the joys

of lighter, brighter
days of empty mirth.    

                                                                                      ***

The leaves within the trees are rustling—whispering—speaking—
the breeze becoming prologue to a storm.  I’m here.  I’m waiting—

I’ve shed my shirt like serpent’s sheathe; my skin, like loamy soil.
You gathering clouds, you darkened heights, bring cleansing, stinging

Truth!  We are not bodies bearing souls; we’re spirit, part and whole,
strewn like stars; the freckled nights and birth-marked wights

of countless lives.  This mortal shell is but the earth and rock and dust,
the memory of all that’s gone before, of forest growth and forest floor!

Come Storm!  Come frightful flash, come rumbling roar!  Descend
and lay your vigil to the side; Forget that wrath-borne duty, dear,

don’t hide!  Your wings were made for action; your intellect and gift
for clashing swords—for iron against the iron, for throwing sparks

like spears from heaven in the distant dark!  I want your light.  I want your Truth.
I want to drown in every driving drop, to feel the gash that cuts through flesh

and grinds the bone to artist’s throne.  I’m here.  I’m ever here.
Awaiting home.

                                                                                    ***

What if we stopped—

What if we waited?

What if we opened and were opening
the wonders of a universe beyond our deepest fears?

What if we spread ourselves, like vivisected urns, like vesseled mouths
beneath a sea of greater winds and fiery rain?

like lotus blooms in lunar gardens
asking not, but wanting all

that we might know

that life was sewn in orchids
born to die?