Into the Teeth of the Wind

Matt Guynn

Yamuna

Tonight Orion burns fiercer than ever before,
the ivory tusk moon, fat in the sky,
Chris’ Volkswagen diesel speeds
through the New York night.

We are going home
from a prayer meeting with a Hindu,
which I didn’t expect.
(I thought I was going to see a Brazilian tango dancer!)
Instead, this devout Sri Lankan,
slim and thin, curly thick hair gathered at her neck,
yellow linen shirt, delicate collar embroidered.

Coriander-ginger-coffee,
thin mint chocolate cookies,
“healing pathological cosmologies.”
Lord=Shiva=Christ=God?
Prayer as exhalation, as inhalation,
as the breath of God,
a border of honey rising around us,
presence made transparent,
claiming this, too, for God.