Perhaps as a boy 
you, too, saw 
these stallion clouds
& knew a sky 
with no blue
was a sky too 
reverent to be 
overlooked
or understood. 
Perhaps heaven
is the moon flag, 
not the moon, 
& you came
to know praise
as vertical only
because the earth 
refused your reach.
Look up. 
There’s a tear
in the sky tonight
like the shriek 
of a frightened mare
or the long wail
a saxophone makes
on a corner at dawn
& this is how I know
you are a woman:
we are both broken 
in two by our own 
creations. I have 
looked to the west
in search of water
& the sheer faces 
of so many boulders
stare back, their bodies
bent in genuflection
at the altar of the sky.
Why have you made me
know the sea? 
Make me a bird, Lord;
make me a man. 
Make me a barn
with a spine so swayed
it pulls back my neck
to crane toward the sky.