Darkness untongues the day
condensed to obsidian in its silent belly.
Turn away from the world and be the night.
Let it slip in you as if dipped in liquid soul, the body nothing
you should concern yourself with now, the body a house
you stepped out of into this forest of your beginning.
Let the currents guide you.
Let the river teach you your sinews and bones.
Ask the dense spaces between trees to open to you
Ask the breeze to muss the veil of dark
Ask the blanketed sky to open one eye to the moon
Ask what sings in you that rocks the stars to sleep.
Who will answer if you wrestle the night
as if it were your brother wounding you to a new self
beside a twisting river its black body snake-like and hot?
Ask the night to bless you ask the night your name
ask the night to call itself and surrender to its telling
syllables falling wet off the mountains.
The world spins slowly so that even words settle and sink.
Only the river speaks swift and black
fluting a cord of sound through the thick fields of morning
polishing silence off the palms of stones
bearing your name on its currents
through the dark alphabets of sleep.
