FAR FROM THE FORTY-SEVENTH STAR

“Come with me and we’ll go to God together
in a city called Clovis
like the Merovingian kings.”

*

No.

*
*
*

To the hills of Burgundy,
rich as wine in their history,
we went. He so wished that we
would make our peace
in his medieval homeland.

*

Like courtiers we walked
into the ruins of the Romanesque
and feasted in the company
of Radbod and Brunhilde.


*

I would give up salt and bread
for dew in a claret cup
but only chardonnay and champagne flourish
in the land of the long-haired kings.

*
*
*

Come, drive the nails through my veins –
why wait till morning
when the rosebuds are thirsting for rain
at the foot of the cross?

For Erik.

*

“Your destiny has arrived, my daughter.”

I came down from my father’s house
garbed in the jade and gold of my grandmother.
Each footstep trembled on the stair

but as I stumbled over the edge of my silks
I saw you waiting for me
with orchids at the east gate.

*

We will know each other
as givers of rings, and swear someday
like the state of North Dakota:
liberty and union, now and forever,
one and inseparable.

*
*
*

Do you remember that man
with a mouth as rich as a blackletter Bible,
and as unreadable?

I would have quit my father’s house for him.

*

On an early evening in June
after he and I had taken green tea in the garden
and watched the gargoyles frolic
on the flying buttresses,
he left me alone to wait for the first stars.

*
*
*

Among your predecessors
I could count princes who had gold
and who filled their houses with silver.

I can outgrow that need for riches
that ruled my younger days,
and forego the love of panicked bells and sharpened blades;
promise me only

that there will be no more blood, nor axes,
and no other Northman
but you.

Now it’s complete, because it’s ended here.
~Frank Herbert, Dune


I’ve given up my body to be burned
and my faith that could move mountains
now lies in shards like a looking glass,
darkly.

*

The desert fathers remember us daily
in their devotions: they ask Our Lady
to pray for us now
and at the hour that we wake.

*

We gather dust
among fragments of Bibles and psalters
and paintings of angels in prayer.

*

This I yet believe: the day will come
when Our Lady of Lost Souls
sends us back from exile
into the aspens and Indian summer.

Album leaf for Beneath the forty-seventh star

After a handful of years in the Old World ghettos
we emptied our pockets and our veins
to buy back our dreams of empire.
Though this sullen country
denied us cactus, sand, and moon,
we held fast to our faith: we did not doubt
that with the blue-eyed wolf this dove would sleep
beneath the forty-seventh star.