May 12*

behind my house
wild maelstrom of tangle
looming ragged firs
harboring the nightcreatures

we go there to dream
of the sacred, the profound

and in the morning
we pray in the ether
that has seeped out in the night
curled around the houses,
flooded through our things.

no one touches this place.
we hold it in our breath.

*Copyright 2010 by Luther Allen. This poem appears in The View from Lummi Island.