"It is Completely Fire" Katie Kilcup
Icon: Maximos the Confessor
The Made Makers
We are the made makers,
the makers of the made.
We cannot make geese
or the infinite web of feathers
and wind tangled in blades
of light,
or thickets of slight sun
wavering in underwater labyrinths.
We make the second made,
feather pillows and forks,
skyscrapers and silly-putty.
The given we have taken
and baked in the furnace mind,
until the tangle of the original
is laid straight in rulers,
clocks, kingdoms.
We are the puppet makers,
imitators all.
The grid of intention cages us,
beautiful parrots, glorious in color and song,
our language longs for height.
We are the made making,
furious with brows furrowed,
the sea escapes our cups.
Escalante
Everything in the desert has earned its place.
The wind whips the un-rooted.
Even I, more ether than rock,
have grown into the slow almost unmoving pace
of sage and creeping shadows
down the canyon walls,
and the raw bodies of burnt rock,
dusty twigs,
porous bones,
scattered leaves, like moth wings,
lovely, dying and thirsty.
Everything belongs precisely where it is,
there is no place for hiding,
all things made manifest,
and the willows bend so slightly
when the spirit blows.
Dawn
The light has already crept into the day
and the air moves
in slow circles,
bearing each bodied thing aloft
on quiet currents.
In this half-world,
each thing is heavy with itself,
slow in awakening- clouds do not scuttle
but roll out new born forms,
mysterious, foretold.
The particular reigns
in my footsteps,
in the high choir of quiet hills,
each plucked string strikes the air
in waves that ring and fade.
One black-beaked bird swings low
to catch my eye,
to see what heights can be seen
in the pale of a sun
not quite come.
Pascha
Nothing compares to the glory of this day.
Death has changed course
and flows, as all gardens of suffering now grow,
round again to Life.
The burning triumph
of this bendy joy and wild beauty
sets all pain ablaze
with time and trust
in the rectifying fire of the one
who fills our empty, inward pits with light,
rips wide to air and sun
the deep rot of ribbed whale tombs
and on this day, and everyday,
asks again, so gently
you might mistake it for a kiss,
if we will have His love.
Pilgrims
In December the geese fly,
pointing south in great arrows,
like the foam of waves
cresting across the sky.
They seem late.
But who knows the truth?
Perhaps these small, dark bodies,
beating diligently
at the pooling black night
are weary after so many days.
Numbers of their flock
may have already let loose
to the earth, suddenly,
their own blood too heavy to bear
up into the air.
I sit indoors,
watching them carry the frozen grit
of storms in their feathers
to bone-known lands
of honey and heat.