Visible and invisible,
it tethers us, wraps our limbs
in radiant linen.

It beats in our chests,
flares out to bless whatever
gets in its way.

I have seen it leap across a field
riding the wind from blade to blade
until the grass grows dim again
and lost.

Feel it knocking at your throat,
wanting to speak in tongues
about the light that even now
is flaming in your flesh
for a little while.

If you stand in a black cloak in a stony field,
leaning into the wind, tilted toward thunder 
and purple jolts of lightning at the horizon;

if you wear a black cloak with a hood 
as the sky darkens and  thunder cracks 
a fine line across the black egg, 
a hairline fracture that splinters into rain,

what difference then
between cloak and cloud,
breath and wind,
skull and sky?

As if there were a door in the sun.
As if somehow that door opened
into a dark heart, its hydrogen frame
blinding those who enter.

As if we would not burn,
would not return to brilliant gas
and dust if we went through,

leaving the blaze behind
like a story we once knew,
its aura still flickering
at the edges of our flesh,
a story we've been feeding
all our lives.

As if we could enter 
the still point, the pause
between heartbeats,
the incandescent darkness
where the blood waits
and then goes on.