Your Memoir is About Me

Gary L. McDowell




Forests were the first cathedrals,
and grass, the first living thing.

God is a beehive first thing on a winter morning.

First things:
my body a city,

the bonfire at the top of the hill.

My eyes take midnight hostage.
In a world of perpetual dawn,

nobody is ever missing.

Thank you, my sudden-little-wonder.
Thank you, my I’ve-been-told-no-before.

I am fat with things.  And life begins.

A pocket full of spiders without webs,
even bored animals appear in paintings.

Thank you, my narrow-weeper,
my speech-alone,
my book-teeming-with-priests.