Dimensionless One, can you hear me?
Me with the moon ears, caught
in ice branches?
Beneath the sky's long house,
beneath the old snake tree,
I pray to see even a fragment
of you--
whiskers ticking
a deserted street,
a staircase leading
to the balcony
of your collarbone.
Beloved King of Stars, I cannot
contain my animal movements.
For you I stay like a mountain.
For you I stay like a straight pin.
But in the end, the body leaves us
its empty building.
Midnight petulant
as a root cellar. Wasps crawling
in sleeves. I sleep
with my tail over
my face, enflamed.
Oh Great Cataloguer
of Snow Leaves, I pray
that you may appear
and carry every piece
of my fur in your hands.
About This Poem
"I wanted to write a devotional poem to a being who is vast and unreachable, and to emphasize this distance, I made myself into a mouse and the Beloved into the Dimensionless One. The poem tries to address an intense, impossible longing. What if I could see the face of the Beloved even for a moment? The poem became a prayer for that possibility, that chance."