Over these many years
I have stripped you of staff and beard.
Boxed up all your punishments,
loved away your wrath.
Gone the gilded robes, banished
any notion of a body like mine.
I have unseated you.
Thrown open the doors and led us both
into sun.
When I look for you now, I find you
in the simple play of light through leaves,
the kindness of birds, benevolence of bees.
I have kneaded the depth of soft moss in grief,
found wonder in worm-churned soil,
considered the seedpod as a nest
for my death.
And then, seen or unseen,
there is the dragonfly’s silent scissoring,
the monarch’s sudden lift,
circling of hawk’s fine hunger.
It has taken me a lifetime
to know your wingspan.
