I Call it Love
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

Watch the stick of incense travel down—
following the burning, becoming
a cane of ash as it goes. In the vanishing,
does anything need to be named? If it does, all names
are one name, and you get to decide what it is.
This morning, I call it love, and all my thoughts
are one thought, and that too I call love,
and when I rise, my gait will have changed, and the ashes
blown away by the burning.

When Night Comes
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

When night comes, it doesn’t dismiss the day.
Instead, it takes it to the river, like
a raccoon carrying a cube of sugar
with its black, velvet hands, and dissolves
it in the passing water. And every time
it looks for the white granules gone—surprised,
but with the hopeful knowing more sweetness
will appear in its hands tomorrow.

Morning Raga
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

Praise wanders the fields, the wind,
the long roads cut through forests.

What isn’t an altar? Everything practices
devotion, and everyday the morning opens holy books.

Does it matter if we’re in our millionth or seventh
incarnation? We’re all headed towards comforting hands.

It is no mere thing to become aware of your own
glories. Ask the nearest angel or ancestor.

The feeling of nearness, the unlit, ready lamps,
the fair principles of darkness.

I think I would never want the absence of desire.
Samadhi can wait, and every step is your darshan anyways.

The all-encompassing word, the way death washes
nothing away, the full blaze of light—

the day holds nothing in contempt.
Somewhere there’s a brown bear—its fur rippling, like

wheat with hunger, trundling towards a river.
It’s fat-surrounded heart is vigorous with joy and the soon

to be splashing for salmon. The unfolding morning raga
is strumming every string on every heart.

Reformation is Never Denied
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

Life works in the living and the dead. We are all manifestations
of light, and energy beams from my leaves and perfumed soul.
With all my ingenuities there are still manifold forms
of the unexpressed mind. Without a cloud in the sky
I am still so diligent in how I pray, and I pick gravel
from my tires with my keys before I drive. I fix my ideas
on stars, ignoring direct contact with the devas in the trees.

Once I heard that plants in a darkened room tremble
when read ghost stories. And walking through Bermuda
grass somehow reminds me all bodies are water carriers.
My changeableness, my stubbornness, my gospel fables,
the little branchlets in my body somehow holy. And I can’t help
but admire Japanese beetles with their copper-sheened
wing covers and forest green heads.

I don’t know where these words are going or if they mean anything.
What I do know is I can’t stop casting my thoughts, like
propellers from maple trees. William Daut said: “Reformation
is never denied.” And so, I’ll keep going—lifting rain-bent daffodils,
and feeding blackberries to chipmunks on my back porch
until my cataloging mind becomes still as a windless pond.

Where Your Desire Body Goes
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

Follow the leafhoppers.
The day is only durable
up to a point. There are new cells
tumbling from old cells, and who doesn’t
die into being?

The invisible ones look up
at night and point out souls
in the stars. Crickets chirp while snacking
on basil, and our perfumed souls
could stare at red-bell flowers all day.

Wrap your tongue around the ripe, black cherry.
Our mouths aren’t just made
for speaking. It is thereabouts–
between when your teeth burst the skin
and the sweetness fills your mouth
that you will join Goethe in his excitement
for finding new colors for new colorwheels.

Then let’s see if you can stop leaping
from tree to flower, from flower to field–
your sunlight-green wings following
wherever your desire-body goes.

The Real Blood of the Heart
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

the flesh doesn’t
impinge on the spirit
the flesh is
spirit that walks
on slippered feet
and carries
cardiognosis
the first the last
systolic metaphors abound
it can be touched
open
and vexed closed
it follows
the body’s impetuses
and also the other
way around every movement
soaked
in arousal
never marginalized
hardly invisible
speaks
many languages
lives full
of little renaissances
its tears
the real blood
of the heart

Put it This Way
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

I.

When Ravana
was killed,
the sun
spilled everywhere,
when Ratnakar
chanted: “mara, mara, mara,”
the gaps between
the words disappeared,
and became “rama, rama, rama.”

2.

Flowers can’t unbloom.
We all
wake up
in celestial mode,
all these words
look like
so many lines
of EKG’s
and echocardiograms.

3.

The day says:
“Put it this way:
remember to let in
a little chaos.
It’s the countermovements
that shed the most
light.”

What Tertullian Said
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

After morning, the day says:
“Let’s put it this way, etcetera, etcetera.”
And I wake, rubbing up against reality,
the small self rebinding.

The rainmaker has come to town,
and, on behalf of silence, I will
knock the angel’s mouth
away from Mary’s ear.

We are all walking gravemarkers,
and the frogs with the golden eyes
are better gods.

The world moves in languages,
and the other dead are telling us things–
about how everyday ends unfinished.
Radiance, use your metaphoric mind
for the better use of hope, and say along
with Tertullian: “I believe because it’s absurd.”