There is god,
and there are doorknobs
I wash in grief
our clothes and dishes
crescents spilling
the last sand of the century
the Acolytes in smocks:
Elise, Eleanor, Evelyn
cross a field
magnifying
iris bluster and
tired sewn patches
a red thread lilting
in their crux
lavender drips
older than the booming
grand door
no bonfire can begin
without the bones
of the dwelling
for the eye is the arch
iris to the vault
pupil forth
unearthed
sunken geometry
summons collapse
we pause
the clearing gathers
darkness surrounds
Amassed; crystalline
debris on my weathered stone
What jettisoned myth
toils in the wake
of synapse?
What fountain calls
before the black house?
There is god,
and there are doorknobs
If only fathers were as concerned
with the child’s creeping silence
as they were with those twenty-six seconds
in the candy store of their birth
we would be without the chorus
and shrinking rooms of bottles
The boy’s pockets are empty
the static cascade of stones
break from haphazard assemblage
hurtled into wood knocks and decorations
what-good-are-you-to-me’s
I could have cured that empty tower with scraps of hay I will to live
there is more to your cup than blackened waters
and death ornamentals in the gallery
I saved you water from the flooded valley
hammers for the keys
seconds are invited
but all go unanswered