I pray to what you are not

Out there, somewhere, 

you are a variable 

in the night's equation. 

 

I listen hard 

to the hands of smoke 

moving beneath the river, 

 

to the abandoned grain elevator 

dragging its chains 

through the tender blood 

of the night. 

 

I listen to the hush 

of your name 

as it's subtracted 

from one darkness 

then added to another. 

             

            *

 

I pray to what you are not. 

 

You are the opposite of a horse. 

Your hair is not the seven colors 

of cemetery grass. 

Your mouth is not a dead moon, 

 

nor is it the winter branches 

preparing their skeletons 

for the wind. 

A double thread of darkness 

winds through me, 

and the night's coarse tongue 

scrapes your name 

against the trees. 

 

            * 

 

I've found a good spot by the river. 

 

The trees line up along either bank 

and bend toward the center. 

 

I've been trying to get rid 

of that part of myself 

that I most despise 

but need most to survive— 

it rises like wood smoke, 

 

it's shaped like a brass key, 

and the hole it looks to enter 

can be seen through, 

revealing a banquet hall 

with one chair 

and countless silver trays 

piled with rags. 

 

            * 

 

Is your voice in the linden 

wood of an oar? 

Your face in the daily ritual 

of the Cooper's hawk? 

 

Is your charity the green rot 

of a fence post? 

 

Are you near me 

as I clean this ashtray 

with my sleeve? 

 

Are you the dead doe's skull 

shining from within itself?—

 

I've been pretending 

not to hear it speak to me, 

 

even though I've entered its voice, 

hung my coat 

from a nail in its pantry 

 

without bumping the table 

or creaking the floor 

 

and moved in the utter darkness of it. 

 

            * 

 

It's finally late enough 

that all sounds 

are the sounds of water. 

 

If you die tonight 

I'll wash your feet. 

I'll remove the batteries 

from the clocks. 

 

And the two moths 

that drown in the lakes 

of your eyes 

will manage the rest. 

 

[Michael McGriff ‘Invocation’, from Home Burial]