THERE WAS A CALMNESS IN THE PINES

I saw the shrine flicker in the distance like a ghost

the motor’s intonation floating through

air like glass, or white-horsemen who approach in heat-haze  

& the fear came back

a stone-upon-the-water

(I saw birds

trailing into silence)

& the white-figures swept past desolations          

as blue-shadows played upon-the-screen, enigmas    

I knew it then & often reminisce

the red-siphons that pulse in dark-rooms

the summer-rains that burned

my eyes like tears, I saw the egrets

lift from

waters-of-stillness, where leaves flutter

in winds that singed-your
skin, & the beginnings of something-criptic                          

I was on the floor when the eagles tore
the carcass from our hope, swept downstream in those currents

that siphon sand from your soles 

thirteen years, & the mystics disappear        

I saw the shrine-quiver in light-that-filters-down   

the sirens winding through courtyards          

I bore the

sigil of an incision

that erased a single-word                           

who was it that insists without-a-face

(I saw birds-dissolve-in-cypress) 

who was it that refused to ever change