To speak of unknowing in the language of knowing
To ride the sun down to the horizon of unknowing

To touch the new shoots of hazelnut leaves with red
To ink shadows as the alders burst into flame

To double as my own interlocutor among strangers

To search my medical records for an early, saving illness
To discover what it meant to be that child
To discover what it really means
To discover the white hind of what it really means

To pursue the white hind among auriferous ideas, voices, realms
To lose her in the dark

To forget
To hear her crying Here I am and think it’s just an echo of my own voice

To find the first place
To find the first place

To ask the question into which it vanishes
To smell the scent of blood on the air

To find the first place
To grope for it as if with roots
To shed the bark of years
To taste the coming storm among the branches

To catch sight of the white hind again
To catch sight of what has happened

To de-sanctify what’s happened
To sleep as it re-sanctifies itself

To learn the names of things at last
To turn around

To turn my back

To return, but not by the way I came

To wash away the radiance from my tongue.