Under the persuasive power of the Pisces full moon

set against upward-sweeping clouds in a New Mexico sky
that, even at night, is lit by an incomparable light,
it has snuck up on me all at once—

The collection of small things not yet forgiven, nearly
forgotten, hanging as seven stars above my ghostly presence.
I shudder as guests at O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch
when they saw the white lady writing at her desk.

For this invisible crown of thorns I’ve worn has kept me
in the dark, not seeing how twinkling elliptical form had me
flying blind and always somehow searching for myself,
writing myself in ever-widening circles that

Disappear before I can catch them there and see how
me holding on to them is merely a convenience to keep me
from the inconvenient truth of love’s pervasive haunting.
I count them and set them free one by one

To fly westward, straightaway to live in ancient echo
beneath the curvature of the vermillion cliffs. Suddenly
I understand clear meaning of yesterday’s impromptu turn
and dusty drive to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.

Were they not, these seven stars spinning, merely a mirror 

of the seven ways I’d lost my balance in the time before?
Such doubt I had in you because of the first thing unforgiven,
and how I’d clung to despair and banished love

For things two and three. Fourth, the gash and open wound,
and fifth the thing that had me downing dreams like whiskey,

bottling up every possibility. Six and seven had seized
all that mattered most to me and though I took them back,

Still I clung to the grievance as a dead thing.
Even when insisting on seeing beauty with heart and eyes,
had I not painted myself with the brush of ugly I once
claimed to be the irreparable thing you had done?

Before I was a ghost or woman oblivious to the crown
of invisible stars that set upon my head, there was a life
that was a light and it rushed out to set all things aright.
The poles might as well shift tonight,

Because before I was a nuisance or a thorn in your side
or a woman lost in beauty not knowing what had died
and what yet lives, I walked among a sky of stars
and dreamed of life and forgiving you.