It was a miracle how my eyes went from red and puffy to those
of a doe's. And he did it. It was his touch, how he held me
and entered me. After the third time, as we sipped honey and tea,
he told me his words were the throbbing in my own heart, (not
to mention a little lower). I was vulnerable, true, but it

seemed he knew everything, got in deep as those scabies mites
that we'd have to boil blankets and coat ourselves with white
salve to get rid of. Since it was Christmas, when I first came
to his rooms, pine and candles glowed, light like some other
worldly light around his body and everything was stars. We

ate figs and hazelnuts near the fire as the animals made
a circle around the house: deer, pheasants, wild turkeys,
fox and horses with the cats and dogs nesting on the bed.
He played Layla and Lou Reed, stood up on a table as if it
was an altar or a platform in some Roman square singing along

with Jimmy Buffet. He told me amazing stories about whales
coming up the Hudson with a man living inside one, how a
wick of blubber would burn 700 days and nights, of
syringa in the front yard so sweet one petal perfumes a
whole country. He told me he planted the Rose of Sharon

because he knew my real name was Rosalyn years before I
was born. It seemed incredible but his words were something else.
There was a story about an invisible army with horses and
chariots. to say that first Christmas was supernatural isn't
even enough. Later I'd scrub dried spaghetti off plates

but that whole first week, Oh Lord. I couldn't believe
so many Sundays would be with him, driving downstate with
my just washed hair to the house without walls, torn glass in
the yard glitter. So many Sundays kneeling in his yellow
robe, apple wood burning, to have him do what to me what he wanted

me to do to him under the old blue quilts the swollen
cats would have their babies in as we all waited for what
would happen to happen