Parsing

You could lift the hem of rain and enter its grotto.  Habit is what blurs
gesture into allotment and enclosure.  Fold it between times with a
monk's cord of silence, just a slick of candle-fat.  That way the next
becomes a sacrament.

Ladies in cream linen and sandals, men in madras cotton.  Resolute and
demanding, the world I love.  Emerging through screens of glass and
leaf, mercurial light tinting the sands amber, taming the water so it
rises and quickens again.

Each day in my plain gray outfit I've waited patiently for a sign.  Even
the shoe with the frayed tassel has gleaming copper caught in its teeth.
I want to be like that, now or in our afterlife.

(c)Luisa Igloria          2005

from Trill and Mordent