Sans Terre

Those who have heard continents drifting

from each other must offer orisons to the god

of maladies and reluctant miracles.

Prophets take skeletons from catacombs

so they can declare Rapture while night hides

our shadows from us. We discover keys

in our pockets, but never the doors they belong to.

When we leave a thimble, a bullet, and a pearl

by the fire at dusk, they’re missing by dawn.

We lumber into deserts to feel our sweat cooling

into salt in the scoop of our collarbones.

We navigate the dunes by stars and sidewinders.

It’s not the grail we want, but to journey towards

our longing. We want to find the tomb empty.

Reveal yourself, we whisper when we mean to say,

Refuse us the moonburnt body. Remain vast and wild

and unknown. A song lives in the robin whether it sings

or not. Therefore music. Therefore masquerade.

Therefore mourners planting ghost orchids means

they saw your wounds close as they reached to touch them.