scribbled within her  body.

He wanted to dig down,

examine their origin,

curious to know why her race

marked her for this fate

on this world of ink and blood.

He had thought other worlds

escaped the bondage of form.

He had long ago grown weary

of people and eschatology.

As he began another incision,

careful to follow with a cloth

to absorb fluids,

he remembered the last time

he witnessed her body

sprawled on his bed. The sunlight

perfect, the afternoon

no different from centuries ago:

drifting sands, chaff and wheat,

caravans for spice and coffee,

a strip of moonlight to know

the right time to enter.

He rubbed her now,

with oils and perfumed herbs,

no longer able to distinguish

a difference between pleasure

and the poetry that shaped

her beauty:  the lines

recited until she stopped

for breath and meaning,

exactly the way he remembered

and nothing left but silence.

but after months of debate

he went forward with the notion

that  it was time to record

his most unusual observations:

Made contact with a race of aliens.

Subject was female, complained

of pain in the lower abdomen.

Diagnosed cervical cancer.

It all comes down to the cervix.

He was nearly certain of it.

He remembered his travels

after completing his last degree.

He waited for hours on the side

of Mt. Ararat for the solar eclipse,

short ring of fire, long circle of life.

In the valley below him,

he noticed a pair of goats mating

in the forced dusk of a twilight

no one else would ever believe,

his mind certain of images

no one should see.

A Room with Too Many Mysteries

In order to uncover epiphanies
for art, they told Dr. Quigley
the spoon must be shiny
and clean, so they gave him a new one.

He began to ladle the air
in the room and then lift it
to his eyes
to see which colors appeared.

Certain rooms are full of red,
maybe a spoonful if you are lucky.

He wondered the house for days,
looking for red, but he only found blue.
He scooped the air again and found darkness
which he brought to his lips
to sip for the first time.

There is no reason
to believe this. Some never do.
Fine. He has seen light fall
in chunks around them as
they sit on frozen chairs
and wait. They never hear the flutter
of wings near the ceiling,
they never see his spoon swirl
with a trace of feathers.

Dr. Quigley is not surprised.

Who could question the flight
of birds in a room full
of so many
unsettled brush strokes?

Look just past your doubt,
where, even in the dark,
all colors merge and become
nameless, free from blame:
here, up to his waist
in his favorite lake, in a room
with too many mysteries to name,
the colors on the water
are the only words
he needs to hear.

What Does Salvation Cost?

Carefully, like giving a balloon
to a child. You can tell them

all you want: hold on tightly,
don’t let go,

but the result
is the same: someone on the way

to heaven, someone lost
in the clouds,

someone barely visible,
a dot now

in memory, someone gone.

What does salvation cost,
he thinks to himself,

how long does it take
to rise?

There are deep craters
in the eyes of some patients.

Places you do not want to go.

Call out the darkness,
he remembers, give it color.

Close your eyes tight
watch the blood swirl

out of the iris and form
a kaleidoscope of cells

in your mind. Give it a name.
Name it the last thing you remember

as true. Call this
the color of the sky.

The Fringes of Enlightenment

Dr. Quigley fell in love
with poetry
many years ago. He remembers
watching the elders cut
the ham one year, and he admired
the commitment involved,
the concentration, the way
the voices in the room rose
and fell with excitement
and criticism. He is unable to stop
the rush of ideas
that come to him on mornings
like this, the poetic hours
that live on the fringes
of enlightenment, just over there
beyond the candles
near the piano and the frost
on the window.

Now, he is aware of the nursing homes
to come, the burials,
the impossible goodbyes.
He wants to believe in the afterlife.
It is hard to remember the light
on those faces and think of them
as works of art,
but he does it anyway:
He imagines rivers to travel,
trails to hike in the hills that overlook
the river Styx,
campfires that summon the gods

and sleep, to sleep
a long night of a thousand winters
and wake up here,
watching the ham fall on his plate,
seems fitting for poetry.

He will eat it anyway.

A Certain Quality of Light

Dr. Quigley is in the coffee shop
again, this time on the hunt:
he needs a cupcake for the soul.

His wondering eye notices desserts
in the glass case,
pastries like odes sit and wait for a whisper-

take me, I’m yours, they say,
everything he needs to hear-

kiss me on the river Styx,
now he is in love-

yes, there is love in Hades
and he has found it:
poets are there
working in droves
to lift the language
of what should not have been
done here
into what should be said
in Hell-

but Dr. Quigley remembers a day
that was so perfect
he could have bought vowels
by staring at stars-
or rearranged the music in his mind
just by catching a fish-

always, for him, it is light,
a certain quality of light
that inspires the language
of his alphabetic mind:

light, for vowels
shadow, for consonants

until he sees Jesus on the cross
and spells Hallelujah:
all vowels and a luminous L-
no sense in going to Hell.

No Thump in the Book for Him

He is tired of letting it all
get away from him.

He stares at his book on the shelf,
admires something in his hand,

and he lets go:
if you were a fly on the wall

you would not see the warts
on the backs of his hands,

but Dr. Quiqley believes in them,
he knows what they mean.

He is concerned about the world,
and he is tired of writing books

no one reads, not even his mother.
He walks the streets,

and the women he sees
are all beautiful to him:

if they only knew, he thinks,
I love even the fat ones

with varicose veins! I love them!
The Golden Rule is no thump

in the book for Dr. Quigley,
he is concerned about people.

When he looks in the mirror,
he sees decay,

after all, he studied it; he knows
his eyes are eggshells

stamped with cracked
scroll dust, thin lines leading

to the place where Adam lay
down on the ground,

his bloody rib
ready

for Eve

Whimpy Had It Right

Dr. Quigley moved away
from hamburgers.

Lately, he decided to eat
Indian food:

Korma, Vandalu, and Naan
have a way of lifting the soul

of a man and then some:
warmth enters the room

to illuminate figures
dancing together near the kitchen

window: their bodies
painted blue, almost a ripe

nudity, eyes swollen
with faith

toes pressed
with blood,

but Neruda
baking Odes

and Rilke
sifting angel dust

caught his attention
in the end,

a translucent layer just enough
to spell heaven

with his finger,
or at least a place

where he could believe
in the eschatology of things:

he had never had a view
of the universe

that was entirely satisfying.

The Viridian Glow of Foliage and Sky

A flummoxed Dr. Quigley
crawls inside a smell.

Vanilla, he believes,
is a good place to begin,

the long dark bean
reminds him of the trails

he walked when young,
cool and dark

beneath the viridian
glow of foliage and sky.

He believes he can find God
if he can cross the rivers

inside his mind:
there are answers

there, he knows,
and crawdaddies

in the slow water
near the sandbanks.

If you could see him there,
he just scratched

his head, his finger
just a centimeter away

from the water
that covers his brain:

questions left
unanswered

and a smell
he cannot name.