The mystics say to dig, hammer the cloud, day
and night. That the act of gazing at the long obsidian
robe of God undresses unknowing. I have descended
one mile underground down a mine shaft
in the back of a pickup and there was no adjusting
of the eyes, only the coal oblivion of open veins. I
have tracked the dark nebula at the foot of the Crux
600 light-years from earth and I cannot penetrate
your meaning, swathed in opaque interstellar cloud
which sweeps light away with dust of loss,
blackness of grief. I cannot pierce
the absence to find a single ray. I am always imploring
you to tell me, beloved, if you have left me forever?
I scrabble the seam of your silence. You blot the belly
of earth, hollow the cosmos; you ink the endless empty
patches, you sharpen my unseeing eyes so I slip
the stars. You hew vast space for yourself in my narrow
atoms. I dimly carry this sparking quarry which slides
through my sieved soul. I am always asking you to untie
your sack of stars, all while here there are diamonds.
