On the Way to Early Morning Mass

I entered the sea on the way
to early morning Mass, walked
down deep along the rims of rock
coral caverns where my misstep
and consequent falling was most
slow and careful flying. I passed
over fields of slender, swaying
tubes of cuttlefish nests, supple
sheaves white and iridescent as pearl,
moved among the swift metal precision
of barracuda passion and shears.
A scatter of rain on the ceiling
of the sea above me appeared a sky-wide
scatter of stars struck to light
and snuffed in the same moment.

I rose from the sea on the way
to early morning Mass, walked along
the wet stones of the path, through
the sunken-blue-eyed grasses and cat
peas of the pasture gauzed with drizzled
webs, shrouds and shells of beeflies
and seeds clinging to my feet,
along the two-rutted road, its frost
fringed skims of water in shallow
delves, the fence ragged and tipsy
with wild rose, stripped blossoms,
crusty yellow leaves black-spotted.

On the way to early morning Mass,
I entered the soft-spun skull inside
the curlew’s egg, heard the echo
of chimes in that electric cellar
of sun, entered the knot of the witch’s
pit, the sweet pulp pit of the lover’s
intention, the knot of felicity,
the pit of vagary. Nothing was blacker
fire than the government of summer
collapsed in the knot of the coal.

I passed once a fragrance
of strawberries and orange simmering
for jam, once lavender and cedar
as from a spinster’s trunk long
locked and suddenly opened, once
a sage wind down from the tops
of the pines. A door blew shut,
and a mongrel bitch on her chain
yipped to an empty window, circled
twice on her measured length.

On the way to early morning Mass,
I followed the invisible corridor
of sky forged by swallows from river
bank to bluff, followed the way
of my hand along the bones of his sleep
in bed beside me, followed the way
of my eye following the way of winter
rain down the icy runnels of budded
oak, and every remembered motion
of succeeding motion was providential,
the way of making the way sanctum,
the proceeding the arrival,
the service continuing on
the continuing