Confession
Drifting from my left eye
A range of snowy mountains. Driving west
I reached the sunny foothills
By late morning. The houses were cruel
And all the same to me
Come from among the drifters and suicides
On the cold streets of Denver where I had met,
For only the second time, my teacher. He sat
At a window, creatures poured from his eyes. Heavenly
Creatures I had never seen arrived to him with the sun
Wrapped in a sparkling white linen napkin. I wore the bad disguise
Of pity or confession’s ruthless music. So he stabbed me
With a sun beam and my heart, in its welter
Of wounds and confusions, died and now waits
To be born into the next thing, elsewhere,
On that far shore upon which I could not gaze
Without death in its solitude addressing me
By the wrong name, without addressing myself to the inhuman
World of deer, stone, white pine and mountain hemlock
In the alien teeth of diamond starlight. God gave me
Eyes at birth, and the birth of his dear son,
As blind as a kiss or a sunbeam disguised
As a yellow school bus. God is fast at the foot
Of the weather-ravaged mountain beneath
Stars bursting from the inconsolable
Future of death’s million little windows
Always open. God is fast as the grasslands
Full of unseen birds.
—Ronnie Yates
Little Bristling Soul 