I’ve had so many flashes
of beauty in my life,
its midnights don’t frighten me.
I have learned where water is.
How the cold has its fire.
Why I have not died
when death seemed so near.
How the sun rises and sets
in Mary’s eyes.
I am not lonely
because she is the world.
I live between rain drops.
Have a past I never lived
but recognize in places I go.
I do not understand wonder.
Why as a child I was amazed
by my toys.
Why horizons seemed to fall,
and what is could not be,
but was.
Why poems have a reality
greater than prose.
To be born is a cataclysm.
To live is to devour stars.
To die,
it never happens.