Chai

Perfect time of the year for Chai and for Tessa Rumsey:

Your Diamond Sutra

Once the mirage was endless--once the horizon was distant--once you arrived on the landscape and believed that without you the landscape would cease to exist the road is wide, straight, bright, crystal, and the sun is at the end of it--out of you, out of tune, radio moon transmitting winter to the naked maples outlined in snow, cold bandages for the abandoned, pale attempts to fill the hole--rowboat suspended above the blank meadow--you passed through the cathedral your soul was carried by sparrows--halo held up by air, field of rusting poppies but no stems appear, horse without a rider, breath without--lost world shimmering, a pot full of copper pennies--pressing close to you, as if you were cold, flying over the snow--one radiant coin placed upon each believer's tongue--what is the body, what have I done--dying to remember--your eyes in December--blue fish frozen inside such white and frozen ponds--where does the body go, where have you gone--(Later, in the death field, such black and poppy horses---) how will I find you when I become the dust?--but the sun--the sun--the sun is at the end of us.

-Tessa Rumsey