More Than Meat and Raiment

Perhaps dream figures of fire and wind

Spirit-being gathered up in human being momentarily

More than flesh and flashy garments

More than supper and skin of many colors

More than meat and raiment.

Age, gender, race, hue, aristoi, data to discard

After when and why and wise—identity on earth, momentous momentarily

Who you are is who you are—a-blaze

Inside, a-bloom, a-risen, all the ages

You have ever been remember

All the stories you were ever told

All the stories you ever told

All the songs you ever heard sung

All the songs you could barely hum

All of these winding around inside you

Like a choir of remembrance.

Blood of heritage               blood of spirit

Promise and delay,     clamoring

Stammering child, weeping woman,

Howling, crying man, talking baby,

Blood of heritage,          blood of spirit.

Injuries, slights, neglects, abandonments

Assaults, bruises, all the hurts you have

Endured, survived and did not

But took inside, these are you

As much as the fire leaping up and out

And the wind spinning round, delight, and comfort, succor

And hilarity, a-trembling

Soul-piece, God-lamp, heart pumping red

Blooded blue blood true blood round

Bone of bones, bone of honor, bone of strength,

Backbone connected to the wise head bone connected

Through the body bones to bones all connected

More than themselves

All the feelings felt recur

Course through thoroughfares

Of thought, riding and gently

Twinkling like little lights, strung

Around, around through

Until the mind breaks with love

Or worrisome need, desire is a firework

Opening up this moment into a thousand thousands.

And then more than that or this

More than words or images

An invisible indelible indivisible

Infinite beyond age the numeral

Or gender the sex or wish or race

The wise or myth or class the money or

No money or manners or hue the grades

Of color or aristoi the steps above

Below more than concept or conceit,

Food and clothing, elusive as freedom-need and justice,

Belief or disbelief, the presence of awe,

And awesome, awful and discrete, replete

And contiguous, night and noon at once

And more than anything we can name now or then or

Once, more than meat and raiment, far far

More than,

And then there will be more for you.