For the pulpit

Moon Almighty

Rising over Lake Monona
An opal wafer: The Body 
Of Christ, a colossal Tylenol™

Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani!
Into thine hands I commit my spirit

   Thanks be to early man, lifting

   Torches with one hand to

   Spit pigment at the other 

   Tagging claim to concave earth

   When fire danced with moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to Heironymus

   Bruegel the Elder, Shamans

   Everywhere, Yup’ik, Tlingit

   Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw

   Under various moons 

Thanks be to the Moon 

   Thanks be to soldiers

   Of thee, Great War, packed

   Stoney and stolid and straight

   In boxes behind a drum   
   Beneath the rotting moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to Sigmund, Jung

   Kafka, André Breton-wandering-

   Mexico-City, Man Ray, Ernst, Dalí,

   Frida, Miró, Magritte, Klee    

   Footprints peppering the moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to those who

   Wept at Angel Island, scrawled

   Names in Dachau, Abu Ghraib

   Are lamenting at Guantánamo

   In cells without moons

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to Why-eth, Eros

   Broadband, the 99%, Blume

   Bones in the Sonora Desert
   Hopper and the dialectic

   Drawn between poles of moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to Tanguy dreams

   Castellón unconscious where Cornell

   Boxes Burroughs in mirrors with Apollinaire’s
   L'esprit nouveau et les poetes

   Bajo una luna surrealista

Moons, the bones of words

Words, the sinew of sentence

Sentences, marrow of thought

Thoughts, arithmetic of art

Art, a crow, landing

Directly in your path

    Together:

I believe in the Moon Almighty

Maker of Mind and Motive

And in Poetry, Son of Experience

Conceived by the Holy Pen

Born of Virgin Ink

Suffered under Otto Pilate

Forgotten, dead and filed

The third day He rose again

Ascended into heaven

and sitteth on the right hand

of Art, the Father

I believe in the Blank Canvas

The Holy Palette of Hues

The Communion of Artists

The Forgiveness for realism

The Resurrection of Memory

And Image everlasting

AMEN