Hymn for Stained Glass

with heat

Utah does not know ocean : but it does know dried lake bed : the violence in the lack
and fall and freeze of water : how ice expands in all our cracks : forcing us open

Utah does not know whales : but it does know bones : how to chisel
holy writ into the sides : of shins : across skulls : temple to temple

it knows of the hive : the swarm : around prophets and kings
it knows erosion : but not sand : God but not god : stained glass

and the breaking of it : taking bluegreen pieces : putting them to your tongue
letting shards sacrament you : open : watching a saint starving

as he swallows his own tail : like laying our sin : hungry bodies down
on sanded cedar pews : tracing fingers : along the grain : like our touch can taste

the lacquered sap : howling at the saint : buried alive in his coffin
howl meaning prayer : meaning chewing hot sand : meaning soldering the scars

on our arms shut : with anointed gold : forcing the saint to shift
a mountain : by eating: stone after glass blown stone