Three Stanzas Ending with God

first appeared in The Inheritance, 2019

I always wanted to have a heron in a poem, like Li Po or Du Fu. I couldn’t come by one honestly, so finally I just borrowed one of theirs. I was at least thoughtful enough to feed him.

Three Stanzas Ending With God

1.

Through a ragged church’s

single-window eye,

miles of narrow hallway

strangled in weed and vine.

Here you could pursue

a whisper for centuries

backward or forward—

either leads directly

to the cold lips of God.

2.

The adjacent field:

two barns teeter and tilt

away from one another

like jealous siblings

trapped too long inside

the same car or family.

If the first ever decides

to shove the second over,

this is but one more way

we might make measure

of the swirling moods of God.

3.

The heron leaps off the page

of the Chinese poem

and glides into my own,

a broken corpse-snake

dangling from his bill.

What else can this be

but another love ballad

about the clandestine

arrangements of God?