Bedchambers of the Lord

       
Dawn overflows a halfshell sky          
He fills painting me Venus          
Doppler-blurred each wingbeat          
Clouds a rising lunar moth      
The horizon is my spine          
His wing the pulsing sky          
He breathes out          
Inspiring velvet paisley plumes          
Forming me His new day,          
Sealing my lips          
Fitting the reins of my lifebreath          
To His conductor’s measure.         
Taking His bit, communion          
Tasting, tuning, gentle turning          
In time I exhale obedient  
Draw His bow across the day      
Eyes raised, strafed, notched  
Aimed by His blazing gaze      
Holding breath the note sustained      
Lashed fast to His mast,    
Timbre,d. trembling, true.       
     
On His key my wings stir and rise windraked          
His updraft works my plumage,       
Cresting the nadir of my spread,         
Then bearing down again, obedient syncope          
His breath draws the ready sunrise     
Mingling with mine             
The proof intoxicates, an ether          
Folding  in again across the circle          
Our lips let nothing pass          
An undulating butterfly          
I am blood He is the chambered heart          
I am the changing light He throws          
Each dawn a burning blanket shaken          
I am fire bright or choked          
Stoked and tended with His air.          
         
When I fly far from Him and thin          
He draws me back with staff,          
Brands me with His score again.          
In night flight  far from home          
Strength sapped, vision dim          
Across the deep no coast in sight          
I have forgotten Him,    
Mind fogs, day ends          
Failing yielding strength untethered          
I drop, wingtips trail  the waves          
Flying blind in  wavering dusk,          
The sad and steady sounds  of self,  
Breathing,  flying  lone,      
Reflected on the sea    
A pale crescent  of dissolving me.          
         
If again His palm          
Catches these remains,          
Curling spent, feather and bone,          
Still I may take His sustenance back          
Body broken feeding me        
Shot through changed once more          
Charged with elixir potent          
Should He breathe me open         
I will work the  streets,        
A  match-girl hawking light  
Warming my hands on borrowed  fire  
Crouched on the shadowed doorstep  
Of the fallen world.    
 ,          
Leaning in I adore,    
 I shield  with cloak of threadbare me    
This brief and borowed flame,        
Moth falling, hungry for His fire.        
         
Roused from His erie again          
Where my head curled under His wing          
Dropping fast and blind in fog          
I burn another day’s descent            
Through air scorched with wars          
I am feathers rocking idly down          
Riding the foam of faceless sea          
Born to die          
I am His narrator          
His fool          
I am He          
         
Revived with brave new medicine          
Ventured tasted gained          
He digests all creation          
His gullet is the universe          
His beak a crucifying sword          
Feed and cleave my dying infancy,      
Closed to the rest of creation          
His bill pierces, to overfill my void          
I ache for the Lord who consumes me          
Unstitching every seam          
Terrible deliverance until too rarefied          
The center cannot hold          
The seal breaks gasping          
Exiled to the surface, rust blooms instant          
On every newborn’s skin          
Inking the burn and creep of death          
On my baby’s first gasping  breath          
Drinking the corrosive air again.          
      
To stay with him and pure          
Is to sweetly burn and suffocate          
To rip my nursing lips away      
Breathe this decaying world          
Is to lose my love and life again.          
         
At creation’s crimson crescent edge         
He takes me, makes me watch          
He draws and pins me to hold,          
Rebreathe Him alone in loop          
Until all recedes to dark,          
I am earth parting,      
My throat fills with dirt    
His roots snake down          
Knitting, knowing me to core,          
Parting the boughs he enters
Our bbower where I wait          
His fingers reach and remind, tender          
I am His burning glove          
He is Kraken
I am every crevice of the deep        
Shot through, mingled indelibly  
Inked, occupied          
There is no quarter          
Where He is not in me          
         
In places I have never been          
He unlocks doors, walls fall          
There is no chart, no saving Word          
In this chambered nautilus          
Each spiral curls inward dreaming
Tumbling slow           
To fill the smallest cells
With His tender glow          
He floods this ivory hold            
He  takes no prisoners      
After the storm this shell is scuttled    
His occupation utter,  
Each secret spreads her robe to die          
Downward, inward drowned released          
Flooded borne and buried in His light.