And I Love You Because a Red Bird Sings

In the morning,
the sky opens its boundaries.
Sea meets the air with its scent
and the air comes alive with fractal
patterns, breaks its own dark
sepia monotony.

The lotus was closed in the moonlight.

Tender green leaves leave
no passages to know what passed through.
There are twelve Eastern pillars of light,
shafts of sunrise
in spatial dreams of mountains
rising in the West in
Bodhidharma's footsteps. Canyons
echo with birdsong.

Somewhere else a child laughs at the monsters in his
cereal bowl, having escaped from behind his closet door.
Dogs and lions dreamed of
bones and ancestors and thorns in their paws.

And I love you in this morning stillness.
Just as I had all through the night.
Just because the Beloved is near.