The kind of chaos
that takes care of you.
A cloud does that
in one way, the woman
in white at the Qatar
Bakery does in another.
She gives you sweet buns
with sesame seeds on them,
lets you pay later. Red
letters on the window.
Haven’t you ever wondered
why clouds are mostly white?

2.
There is summer in my hair,
a strange feeling as if
my hair was someone else’s

pure as your face, warm, austere,
symmetrical, in repose.

3.

AFTER
a metaphor borrowed from time

Thus the title and the subtitle
of the book I wrote in sleep–
to analyze who people really are
and what they mean, unknown
to themselves, that is what all
the rest of us are for, to see
you as you cannot see yourself.
So it’s one more commentary
after all on Exodus,
each of us takes a turn
being God, passes by
all the rest of us
who get to see who
and what that Passerby is.

4.
If a whirlwind
stopped moving
but still was
what is it,
what would it say?

5.
Reverence
immense,
due
from all of us
to all of you
who are us too.

6.
And the Bible says so too,
treat everyone like God,
you can’t go wrong.

7.
Now back to the cloud—
this is an opera, after all.
Perfect cumulus
over perfect green
the song sings.
The lawnmower is at lunch,

there is a throbbing in the pit,
the orchestra at bay,
a few violas and one cello
passing the time of day.

8.
What a friend a window is! —
only self-revealing when you choose to look.
And you’ve never seen a window drunk,
and only rarely does a window
look frightened, rarely,
like the eyes of the girl in the bakery
as she looked at me and came to help.
                                                     20 July 2020