With Respect to Vaughan and Wordsworth

(I wrote an earlier draft of this poem when I was pregnant. You can also read it here, where I've included music and imagery).

Oh God of deep and dazzling
Darkness

Pregnant you glow
with dark, dark light
until exploding, earth,
engorged with divine birth,
shudders to life
then bursts

God everywhere

in blade of grass
wet breath of babes
spiderwebs and dew

God everywhere

then earth,
like glass struck
and nearly shattered,
explodes
veiny icy webs shoot
across its surface
now murky but glittering

And before it drops
into a trillion dusty pieces
you blow
with breath almost still
and the world holds,

glittering,
pulses and flutters--
gauze on wind--
aloft,
puffed with
vapors of life

dazzling murky
earth
shot through
with you

and then you,
infinity,
trickle
trickle to a whisper
and die away,
leaving earth only murky,
no more glitter

Drained of its dazzle,
earth moans,
begins to shatter
beneath the greater weight
of that deep, dark silence

Absence
becomes your name

Absence everywhere

everything, everything
pregnant
with Absence

Piece by piece
the crystalline webbed,
once-breath-of-God
dissolves to dust

flutters opaque
upon the dreary dark
of day
bright, bright
and empty
so full of empty

Absence everywhere

in blade of grass
wet breath of babes
spiderweb and dew
now murky-dull

Earth
groans and
inwardly implodes,
emaciated it
births and births
until it begins to starve

awaiting another a birth
to dazzle
the bright, bright
darkness of its day

Oh Darkness
of deep and dazzling
God,
speak
speak
again
speak