Speaking In Tongues

    I go to church every Sunday

    though I don‘t believe a word of it，

    because the longing¹ for God

    is a prayer said in the bones.

    When people call on Jesus

    I move to a place in the body

    where such words rise，

    one of the valleys

    where hope pins itself to desire；

    we have so much landscape like that

    you‘d think we were made

    to sustain a cry.

    When the old men around me

    lift their hands

    as though someone has cornered them，

    giving it all away，

    I remember a dock on the estuary²，

    watching a heron get airborne against the odds³.

    It‘s the transitional moment that baffles me—

    how she composes her rickety

    grocery cart of a body

    to make that flight.

    The pine siskin， stalled on a windy coast，

    remembers the woods

    she will long for when needs arise； so

    the boreal forest composes itself in my mind：

    first as a rift⁴， absence，

    then in a tumble of words

    undone⁵ from sense， like the stutter

    you hear  when somebody falls over the cliff of language.  Call it a gift.