For Brother, Talking With God

God is the voice of the woods

Perennially filled with birdsong

My brother, who is the softest part of our father

Laments his exodus behind a veil of cigarette smoke.

Every night, he prostrates in prayer

Opening inwards to God.

He tells him! He tells him to enter the

Dry woodwork of his bones like fire

And the flame to consume all

Until, dust is being;

The language beyond the living

But he knows (in this world)

There are only three ways to God:

Death, silence and tragedy

Though I can never know,

I don’t think God, like our father, has a face.

He had a face when I was budding and jovial.

Now he has a string tied to his feet

I hold him above myself like a drifting balloon spirit.

When I was twelve, I thought all the dead

Floated up since God is closest to the sky

Now the sky is as close as the ground

And outside the world is always about to end

Brother, before he leaves tell him . . . to shed his

Wolf skin and return to the pasture of a lamb

Oh, brother, brother

Tell him before the future finds us as bones

And the vultures convene to eat us.