Sans Terre
Those who have heard continents drifting
from each other must offer orisons to the god
of maladies and reluctant miracles.
Prophets take skeletons from catacombs
so they can declare Rapture while night hides
our shadows from us. We discover keys
in our pockets, but never the doors they belong to.
When we leave a thimble, a bullet, and a pearl
by the fire at dusk, they’re missing by dawn.
We lumber into deserts to feel our sweat cooling
into salt in the scoop of our collarbones.
We navigate the dunes by stars and sidewinders.
It’s not the grail we want, but to journey towards
our longing. We want to find the tomb empty.
Reveal yourself, we whisper when we mean to say,
Refuse us the moonburnt body. Remain vast and wild
and unknown. A song lives in the robin whether it sings
or not. Therefore music. Therefore masquerade.
Therefore mourners planting ghost orchids means
they saw your wounds close as they reached to touch them. 