Jonah

Walk a Kiln

Four men walked a fire house

with cries an octave up.

Chord notes, head voice unuttered get

a man to bypass thought.

Off with the hat, hair, eyes, skin, teeth,

Lay hands upon the tinge,

be incandescent, kindle light,

that’s how to walk in kilns.

Change

You might be simple enough

to give up life to live

an image of being wrong.

Give up pleading,

deflate the line.

But think,

Do you want to live

without intention?

Change is an act of forgetting.

Embrace

“I can’t look,” he says, that’s good,

seed coats spin the form.

A hand reached out, retrieved the flame

of words that came from arms.

Spray water, shake, the shells fall off,

the egg is born.

Jonah

When fine gold lost its luster

and I had no breath,

when the precious gold had altered,

and waters closed over my head,

sons once worth their weight

and pots of clay the work of hands,

I called on the LORD from the depths.