Open over a seed-and-insect-hazy prairie or a pond
Of knotted black willow or open beside an oak-shaded
Garden of painted trillium or a sea-rocketed
And salted sky, a window never exists
As anything but pure continuum. Forever empty,
Its frame is only filled by the everlasting beyond
Of inside and outside.
If a flower were a window, then through the split,
Lavender stained-glass of the pinewoods lily,
The first careful violet clasp of the void
Might be seen, the perfumed and petaled origin
Of the abyss might be sighted.
And by watching through and beyond
The three wing-shaped windows gliding as birds
Above the winter trees, one might witness
A three-way bending of matter to conception,
The multiple creasing of blessing
To bone, the clear intention of illumination
Gathering itself to blood.
Grey bark, scaly buds, simple lobed and saw-toothed
Leaves can disappear into the details
Of the beech becoming invisible within the frame
Of its own existence, becoming the transparent
And branch-shaped window through which one might look
out
Upon the arboreal creation of emptiness only visible
Through sweet sap and wood.
And learning how to look both ways
Through this skulled window, how to watch
Through breast and hands and marrow, one might actually
see
That transformation, that union of death
And light occurring continually right now and forever,
On both sides of the body and far, far beyond.
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