Sunday Night Prayer Meeting in the Sixty-aught-Six

"Numberless are the world's wonders, but none more wonderful than man." Sophocles

I. I go over backwards, on the earth turning, over my heels to hang from bare feet, passing through the dark underside of the planet. The sun, I first feel its light on the top of my head, then down my neck, till finally it spreads over my whole body--a surprise.

I run this way and that, throw stones, climb stairs, smear ink, clutch beauty, writing its name a hundred different ways, and reach up with both hands over my head, writing with fingertips rushing through the sky, passing through new clouds, empty air, cool clouds, dark, then heavy air, dispersing curling trails, and no clouds—this, my daily dive with knots of memory falling from my pockets from up here next to the chandelier down onto the mirror below.

II. Me, so precious, like you, vital, boisterous—a lava bucket; that’s a bucket spilling over with lava! How we envelope sound out through our ears and through our sight out through our eyes and touch out through our skin in the taking of lakes and continents, swallowing them whole with mountains and spiting out the bones—all the givers, givers of free and sensuous gifts devour us—our kin—hearts in mouth.

III. The soul breaths through laughter, through fan blades, turbines, propellers, flowers when they have opened and are full of nectar and shred and full of pride and power—in this, our kin full of light. Peacock dance. One bug with the sun in its tail flashing at stars as it hovers over the summer lawn. Then another and another, then all together fetching lovers.

IV. Thank you is not thanks or any tender, but our name—“Hello, Thank You. How are you? I am here.” I bow to the thank you in you. Thanks has never heard the puritans or the dogma--it is an empty hand, has never known work, never swallowed an obligation to love, never earned a value through difficulty, has never been strangled by the Christian abacus and its earnest penitent banality, has never been counted in the Muslim pharmacies, and has never had a place in Buddhist check writing. Sacred is what we, the thankful, burn. While others argue to rename. It's what we know as packaging, crumbs, the rust--the now dead part of the way something used to feel.

V. Science eternal! Refinement of mind. Bound to light, breaking containers--natural cause and big joy. We, us humans, exult! How we know is how we love—through the excitement of finding out, of penetrating the deepest mysteries--the ongoing going on. The temple is closed and the beach is open.

VI. Look! What is it? What do you see? How do you feel? Tell.

VII.

VIII. I see beautiful people everywhere.

IX. Yaaaayyyyy! Hoorayyyyy! Yaaaayyyyy!

r.z.