Before every beginning
like a pilgrimage I have to go back to you



to see you do things
                                       (the action
                                       as essential as the end



I watch you first lady of the garden
weave
            n
                 dance
and water the plants in our apartment



There are so many of them
that I am often unaware of their presence



Your rituals remind me
how ignorant and numb I am



You work miracles for them
I desperately try to name them



My want to freeze
the essence into poem

                                       to make a church of it
has had the expected effect



paralysis



but the sun breaks through
winter's first frosted window



and your presence & your actions
give us blessings we can be





from Romantic at Heart & Other Faults
1979