“Not my will but thine,” I hear in an echo
of a dream where a woman is brushing
sand off my back, her nipples pressed
against it, saying, “There,” and I think
of the prayer which pretends an immediacy
the divine rarely participates in. Waking,
I realize, to Sunday morning. And the laughter
and the sighs and the body heat are sacrifices
to angels standing by unable to be anything
but messengers and not the thing itself like
me feeling flesh against flesh, heart calling
to heart in the love language of the world,
which was the language before words
took hold and defined what is and what isn’t
wrongly. The attempt to find the old language
our salvation, redemption in the only word
that matters, that ecstatic “Yes” before
the words, “In the beginning” were said
to be said. I smile at the day, this Sunday
morning, feel the kiss upon my lips.
Hear the angels sigh their longing to be human.
Know the truth of the lie – “A little lower than the angels.”
-Byron Hoot
Hootism: there are metaphors everywhere.
