Spun

My beard contains the fibers of a million universes,

split up,

                                             resurrected out of the spacely dark

         and returned again

to a constellation’s smattering of brown and red and gold

on my chin:                           —the new universe

                                    below the gaping mouth of an acolyte.

Apostate fibers—where did you find the path from

                                            

                                        the charybdal mouth of God to my face?

The threat of a new heaven—

did it disturb you?

Did it send you lanceward into the longing found below?

I pick constantly at the byzantine bushel—mad, unrelenting 

                                                                             growth, but

                                                                        benevolence.

I hold up a single hair—crooked as a staff to draw the wayward
—and hold it up

to the sunlight—the same sunlight which lives inside each filament,

                                                      each strand of irisial beauty,

                           each dark center upon center of pupil—

I try and pick out the color of Arcturus,

      the red light of alien stars, the birthplaces of my mother’s

                                                               and father’s genes,

      the wide, open sky mouth of God—black enough as endless,

                                                      large enough to swallow whole

                                             the history of my face.