Falling in Love in Under Ten Minutes

0:00

The warmth of your arm
on my arm (not quite touching
but the air between almost
in the gap between us and you
shake my hand and your name)
is everything I remember suddenly.

0:01

O Maria, familiar lady, what
if any shroud can make me invisible?

0:02

The stalwart concord
of the lines on your brow,
the rough fringe of your fingers
when they grasp sonorous threads.

0:03

Tonight I listened to Josquin,
his Marian shroud made me visible.

0:04

A fly that walks on flatness
then suddenly flies not falling but is
taken up into and out of across the
medium between our bodies
and how can it be? that between us
such a thing can move from two to three
dimensions: it is polyphony

0:05

and can my body existing outside itself
in the air beneath my breath ever reach you?
If the gap is shrouded is there serenity
in that I suddenly must only
remember your face?

0:06

Daniel was the king of lions
and his coat in under ten minutes
covered all the mouths of my heart.

0:07

Subito Catholicam, you faltering
faithful unnamable familiarity, you
startling old-friend strangeness, are
you Mary and even if so, why do I KNow
your AGeless GhoSt?

0:08

In my knowledge your eyes
must be sacristies filled
with more holy water than could
ever wean my heart's lion.

0:09

And now I remembering know
that it will be enough to hide
under a shroud for five days
and peering through worn wholes
of grace tirelessly imagine
your face in any light.