Waiting for a Poem

I am only enough now to eke
the slightest ridge,
the faintest stripe of ink.
I am a ghost of an ant
under the heel of your sky,
under the weight of all
precedence,
this anxiety of influence.

This room is no voice, this temple no emotion.
This is not a story or an argument;
neither a metaphor, nor a sight to see.
You misperceive, you treasonous
concealer,
thief of my court.

I am a person working, a person eating, a person who is sleeping it all off.
I may have been born somewhere once, yes, I may have some ambitions.
Don’t we all? I travel here and there, never out of the country, and I dream.
Dream of having children one day, so as not to hoard the spotlight overmuch.
Let this attention pass from me.
Like the passing of a memory
let this pass, as I age,
as a darkening
vision.

This is my body,
this is my blood.
Eat and drink.
Do this to forget me.
If anything remains,
let it be my words.
I will keep them unto death.

Who reveals themself in perfection?
Who chooses how
and what
and why?
Whose revelation is
not ours to demand,
whose language is
not by us brought?
After the kingdom is leveled
who will stand in the rubble
and climb the stumps of stone columns
gather the light from broken windows,
awaiting
an audience of winds
to proclaim the everlasting?

We will rest
upon a mountainside,
a makeshift holy house,
in a valley, or a field,
or where the wood meets the river.

Rest.

The poetry will have written us then.