What New Vision Is Supposed to Mean: Where I Am Today

Pretend my house is on a street in Istanbul
and that actual figs are growing in our yard
and that you sit with me and drink rose tea
and the village elders say their prayers
indiscriminately, so everyone, everyone
is blessed through the stillness
for which you have an appetite

Pretend you don't flee when we grow old
or when a shivering stranger stops by
and asks us to tell something we recognize
as wise—or some song in the world we wish to sing
that we find nothing miserable about this question
or offering an answer or singing our response
Now this night—give your buttonless jacket away

Give someone you don't know a blanket and hear
the sound you never heard before—a cat moaning
at the door—unsure of this world under the Wolf Moon