Come up out of the deep, water
spilling off your body like dissolving
pieces of silver bone, beyond bone,
beyond silver, the steel skeleton
of sin dissolving to rain.

Even the coho, even the sockeye rise,
though tethered forever in river
heaves and yelps.

Walk out of the river fire, the radiances
of your body falling as you come,
like spears of burning oil and spikes
falling from a flaming pine. Burn
like water burns in a noonday sun.

Even the cypress, even the bulrushes
rise from water, though they are as bound
as stone moon-craters to the earth.

Come like the river comes, voluptuous
with sky, broken and mended again
by the breaking. Walk out the way the plum
walks from its blossom, ravaging
with transfiguration, killing in the way
a seed always kills.

Sentient as script, come up out of the river
like river. Come the way Christ as water
keeps rising out of the water, keeps walking
closer and closer as sea to the sea.