IX

If it became impossible to touch and be touched, to see

and be seen, to love and trade ecstasy for risk where risk

is ecstasy, to be hidden in plain view, to be perfectly lost

which means lost to the world, lying side-by-side arms linked

in a bond so intricate it could never unfold or break —

If it became crucial to live out of sight, to be housebound,

to walk a beaten path in the garden, to sit at the window

blurred by rainfall, to sit barred and blocked, books

set aside that would never be read, rolling news of flash flood

and fire, angels treading the updraft, a chaos of voices —

If dreams should give the rest of it: the path in the garden

going underground, flood and fire as God’s only gift

the house holding its secrets, that pattern of locked rooms,

what lies outside (voices: angels) crowding the perimeter —