Communion

I strip by the spillway,

           taste dawn’s copper light

in the sweet-and-sour leaves

of the sorrel weed. Whitman’s beard

           unravels in pond mist.

His voice rasps through cattails.

The night his words first flared

           like sparks from the page, I said

to the dark: I, too,

will indenture myself to lightning;

           I, too, will trace constellations

printed on the sky’s carbon paper.

Last night a drunk friend

           blamed Whitman for lighting the torch

that guided planes into Manhattan’s towers.

This morning, Canada geese squawk

           like talk-show hosts

before skidding into pond scum.

A crow pecks the rainbow

           from a trout

gasping on the shore’s cracked mud.

A bass snaps at a dragonfly

           suturing the air with blue thread, wings

shimmering like stained-glass splinters.

In the hush between waves,

           the mist whispers:

I know they say I’m blind

as the cloud erasing itself

           on water, as the moon

with its gray eye patch.

I know they say I can no longer shoot

           sunlight out of me

against the sunlight breaking into me.

But I am and always will be

           a sun roaming the streets, pressing

my ear to the lips of the dying,

gathering their last words

           like a sparrow

picking seeds from dung.

Mist clears. A starling sways

           on the top shoot of a white spruce,

scatters stars from its breast.

A muskrat slips from its hole

           in the willow bank, unfurls

its signature on water.

The sun shuffles from the swamp behind me,

           stamps a path with its boot soles

across the pond for anyone to follow.