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TASTERS FOR THE LORD

Not the river as fact, but the winter river, 

and that river in June as two rivers.

We feel it run through our nature, the water

smelling of wet rotting just before spring,

and we call it love, a wilderness in the mind.

Mediterranean light as provender of women.

All of it contingent. This version as a vector product.

The body is a condition of the spirit.

The snow sifts down from the pines in the noon

and makes the silence een louder. A tumult

of singing when we cross the norder of courtesy

into a saor of the heart. Each of us tempered

by the other, altered in ways more truly us.

We go into the secret with the shades pulled

down at dawn. Like a house on fire in sunlight.

We enable God to finally understand there is 

a difference between you sitting in the clearing

confused by moonlight and you sitting in the bare

farmhouse amid the kerosene light. The two of you.

JACK GILBERT

The Great Fires