Damascus

I look out over the flinting sea,

standing from the shores of a dream. I want

to find my sister there, floating just above

the dark water, but find nothing.

In every direction, the tern-filled sky opens

through the clouds, its burden of light

shared by my searching. I listen intently

for any voice other than my own to call me

out over the white-flecked water—anything

other than the small hum of my own heart.

I turn away, ready to awaken, when

from the depths I hear the leviathan

low my name—all the water within me

rings with its ancient rumble—and I turn

back and walk into the waves.

Notes on Unadornment

There is a house that joy lives in, but he's always busy with the computer. Lonely's house is full of guests and lobster, dancing. Always late into the marble night. And every time I visit kindness, always someone else: despair. So I wander the parking lots and beyond—yellow fields of soy—and call the ache inside devotion.