Song and Skin

In the soft and quiet amplitude of dawn,

I wait beside a window.

Not sleeping well these days,

I wake in wonder

as the sun rims red the east-view hills;

cacophony begins with birds

and thoughts.

I say aloud. So listPull down thy vanity,

I say aloud. So listening begins.

A voice starts low,

not mine so much as nothing in itself,

and which a holy man I met one day

called God, the not-self rising, rinsed by dawn,

almost laid bare.

Uncovered and alert,

I love whatever I can almost hear, a longing

satisfied in song and skin:

like something that I have in my possession

yet I still desire,

a wish to own what is mine already.