VESPER
in all the years just my body,
the cells, the vessels, the gloopy
tubes of blood that separate
the slow work of dying and this
night. again evensong, again
latinate blunders of breath-wind
rushing the pews. the hours
fall apart like skin underwater.
i can’t remember my hands
except for its resurrection
of the throat, how the soprano
clicks her teeth in low, stately
rumbles on the imperative;
slow-hymn, synecdoche. but,
here are the organ’s pipes
like my mouth. again and
again they open, trilling winter to
a finer diction. my thick, foreign
tongue, gnash-lipped, loosening
like the ash of the dying trees, again.
run like stars into the deep blind
houses, over the hill: it begins,
o lord. leave me to catch another.