I think of a friend who eats out of sorrow,
then, forgets to eat, out of grief.

She sits alone in her bedroom,
like a desert sparrow,
like an owl in a biblical wilderness.

This is us
writing to say, please,
                              don’t go early out of this world.

And by that we mean to add no guilt, as though you needed more
night,
and no bargaining,
as though to purchase your ongoing presence
with the spectre of our absence.

All we’re saying, is, we recall the fragrance of our easy engagements,
how yesterday, just the thought of your company brightened our hearts,
how even the sand and the shells and the stones
thrilled in your walking,
how a flower opened for your blessing.

Your sullen eyes feel wrong now.
But this is no parody of you, this is you,
here, now, with your pain,
your blinds drawn shut to keep out more loss.

And this is us, understanding as best we can, and saying,
there are no opinions here, no audit of your heartache,
and whether weeping at the brink of day, or
sitting at dusk holding yourself,
or groaning or eating or not eating —
your anguish will not go unheard.

These are our feet, arriving,
these are the ears of our hearts, listening,
these are our arms healing around you,
telling you in touch, remembering for you,
all the way down to your broken heart,
the concert of your spirit,
the flight of your inner monarch
your own perfect loveliness.

Lord, the days have grown dark with smoke
and the nights are lit with missiles
and I will not see another moon.

Have mercy.
My bones are wax.
My soul is ash.
O God, how long?

Will violence forever be progenitor
of this world’s values?

Will the malignancy of bloated egos
forever lead us beside death’s waters?

Will the ministers of illusion and conspiracy,
with slogans from our shrunken vocabulary,

forever divide us, then provide us
as convenient targets — scapegoats, sacrificial victims?

Open your eyes, Lord, the land is sprouting roadside crosses.
Who will be left? Who will think to praise you?

I am sick with grief.
I swim in tears.
I am undone, but for these hollow heaves.

Here I am, 21, and consumed by sorrow.
I stagger in the dark, up your holy mountain,
as under a sack of rocks.

I do not reach you.
There is no holy mountain, no holy mountaintop.

Oh, but if there is, if you’re listening,
if you understand my cries through my weeping,

deliver us, O Lord, from heads of state who walk on faces,
save us from all small politicians
who do the bidding of bankers,
who grow fat from the economies of war.

And may the wisdom of our spiritual lineages
rise and walk under no banner, but truth,
and may we fight the worst with our best.

Then, let commissars and presidents fall, headlong,
into the shame of their own making,

let the Generals be confounded,
by the laughter rising from old women,
and by the singing coming from the young,

and let soldiers everywhere, refuse their orders,
drop their arms and return to their mothers.

These trees, I do not understand. I speculate their ancient wisdom, their fame for holding, in the tight folds of their rings, tectonic shifts, memories of empires, stories of great beasts, today’s quarreling blue jays.

I stop beside a particularly impressive one and take a picture. I was here! exclaims the picture.

Over there, one from the Renaissance, a youngster, and there in a hollow, one from the time of Charlemagne, and this one, I lean on, from Constantine.

Centuries of monastic listening, sifting the air for mist, tracking the movement of light, has furnished them with a deep quiet strength, open to conversion, able to wade the leveling floods, endure the storms of fire, scores of killing droughts — surviving everything, prayerfully, even the clamor of humans.

And here I am, picayune tourist, hoping to trade on something large, enlargening, pocket a bit of old-growth repose for my existential resume.

But I stop. Pause. Call up my inner sparrow and place my cheek on a cleft of bark, ancient as the time of Christ, and as inscrutable, and wait.

This long journey out of the self, with all its detours, its dark thickets, its wash-outs and stoic winters, what drives it?

Even this diluvial Sequoia, at the crack of germination, was kissed by death (and did not flinch to kiss it back).

I look up, even the lowest limb is unreachable, hidden by height.

These trees. And all I know is that I like it here. Wandering among them, wondering at them like a newborn, watching the pleated light of a noonday sun jazz the matted floor with mottled yellows, sweet as jelly beans. Giving me one more March day.