Freed of flesh

he strutted more lavishly

than the bigness

of magnolia flowers.

You hissed at him

in your grief,

like a distressed adder

below a midday sun 

—a bone

snap-ping

under

the confession

he could no longer

live with the pain.

And I was a slack-jawed

eel in a dry bucket

when you told me of the sighting

—except

to know you swam

in an undertow

I had no arms

to reach.

Is love

a turning

of open

eyes and mouth

to the ghost

the other sees

when it surfaces

from the silt?

I who have known 

a succession

of solid walls

and my fear of the dark

admit to

a graceless grasping-after

for more than gravity

for five loaves of bread and two fish

to become sonnets

for God in

the heart of a whirlwind

or the strutting of a ghost

or the untold miracle

of a fly cleaving to a wall.