Syncretism

Runner-up, 2023 Northwest Review Poetry Prize

• Three arguments against syncretism:
• 1. Fish can’t mate with flower
• 2. Moon is not sun
• 3. Without a first One, all = none
• Three arguments for syncretism:

• The wood is writ with burl and lichen scrawl,
• blooms of fungus. Cat’s paws markings just offshore,
• frigid water boiling at the convergences. Sun-simmered
• forest releases its fragrances. Salted butter here,
• there licorice. I digress. Does God digress? Unspool
• theme … and theme … or variation?

• The voices on the boat are muted at the dock,
• even in such proximity, but heard clearly
• on the hilltop, its ridgeline the threaded lip
• of a bowl of light. Contrivance and capitulation,
• self-portrait as Janus face. Because I thought I heard
• the grasshopper sing in meter of three claps
• and one wave beat, thought I heard flam and ruff
• on goatskin in the tide slapping the flank of the skiff.
• Because we bow to Conscience. Because you are not one
• of my own if you leave your neighbor unfed. The wind pads
• across the sea, pulling the draping current off
• to show the skeg-scraping saddle of rock.