Valero

There’s a certain Texas sunset

That summons you to your knees

With a devastating glory

That slows the mind and wakens the deep

                    It’s a blaze that can find you anywhere

                              Even the Valero station just north of the border

                    A paved petroleum temple

                    Lined with plastic bottles, tires shreds, and candy wrappers

          And suddenly you’re staggering across the parking lot

          As the hours collapse

          And it hits you how the pulsing clouds above the diesel pumps

          Form an argent throne for a hidden god

And this god is really just the secret language

Of a song that can’t be heard with ears

          A tremendous chorus

Sung by all things formed, formless and yet to be formed

          And there you are standing on a pile of trash

          Beneath yellow acacia branches drifting in the wind

And you forget your own name

Right as you forget the face of your mother

          You have never seen a sun sink

          You have never known a gravel parking lot until this moment

                    When every blade, pore, and tread

                    Cries SACRÉ, SACRÉ, SACRÉ!

                    In the stunning timeslow

          You find you know nothing

                    And the nothing knows you

may is flowering, showering,
falling asleep on my shoulder at breakfast,
staying with me later and later each night,
the flower moon, the milk moon,
full fuller, then fullest,
until overflowing with may moon,
sleeping under it, on grassy blankets,
holding a year on my tongue, so sweet,
melting with me, while may,
the lullaby, the dancer of flowers,
pouring honeyed light into our eyes.

selenic

“but what if it doesn’t?”
i find my drowsy lips asking you.
“but what if the moon is only the worst thing that’s ever happened to the sun?”

what if the sun never wanted to shed his 
blue sky-skin?
and only ever is wishing for Orion’s arrows
to fire at the rising skull of moon,
so he could shoot her down
dead.

because the sun might be a greedy god,
hungry only for his only light.
and not the pilfered pale shine
of another.

i ask you all of these with my clumsy mouth.
and you do not respond. 
because the answer is simple, and doesn’t need 
to be stated.
that star, bled its light 
alone in space for a billion years
before she came.
the only one who would raise her face 
and shine back at him.