sacred

I walk upon my sacrifice 

the body always stealing from the earth, 

being spilling over the lip,

the chalice forever overflowing.

The blood turns brown

the green sock sticking to

the bled through gauze 

gifted with the warning and

the wait, the heavy press,

pain singing along to

this stumbled dance,

this humbled glint of cognition,

the engine turning over in the dirt.

Ants seethe about the roots,

doves squabble upon the crown as

dead leaves cling to their undoing,

each limb a crowded precipice,

every tree a sutra keeping to the law. 

Looking up doves scatter

a John Woo mosaic between

branch and firmament, 

the gospel circles in the soil.

The moment is always burning through 

the Bonanza map made again, this mandala

I bleed into the once was, the day goes away—

the world’s only work is the turning.