Status Updates From Bonfire Opera: Poems

The coyotes are wilding again, a frenzy of high-pitched yowls
and quick staccato yips that wafts up through my windows after dark.

What is it in us that wants to take
whatever has ascended to the heights of spirit
& pull it down into the mud to wallow with us
in our own, holy humanness?

As if we needed to assure ourselves that this is enough,
this realm of rock & stream & dust
to which we belong a little while
before we bequeath our atoms to the wind.

… I was surprised when he leaned to kiss me, to cross the threshold that forever marks before and after in the heart’s guest book, a portal you can open and find nothing – or there might be nebulas, comets, whole galaxies.

I said let’s not, we could hurt each other.

Isn’t it better, sometimes, to enjoy the fragrance of the blossom than to eat the flower?