RECURSIVES
I’ve seen the face of God too many times
in such gold as the morning carves in trees
or Montezuma’s noon piles on my feet
or evenings, moonless nights the brightest,
the stars enough to canopy the sky.
And then, of course, in the faces of strangers
I find in my wife, my daughters and my son.
The recognitions that put out my eyes.
What do I make of this unaskforness,
the wordlessness I make into one word
then the next, trying to light a world
on earth approximating what I see,
the indescribability of being seen?
—from Rattle #45, Fall 2014
Tribute to Poets of Faith
__________
Peter Cooley: “My faith is a part of what I see and touch and feel, a part of me, a part of everything. I would have to say it’s like a radiating light I find in the world around me, corresponding to a light inside myself. I don’t like defining it, but poems of this nature have characterized my last three or four books. Don’t poems do the job better?”
