Kingdom of Heaven & Mystery, two poems by Wally Swist

The father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth
and people do not see it.
The Gospel of Thomas

After judging each wreath
hung on every door on Beacon Hill

on a scale of one to five stars,
we sit facing each other Christmas evening

in the bedroom in your Aunt Striddie’s
Empire chairs. Streetlights illumine

the blizzard’s gusts that shine
over the snow angels we made—

the candles blown out in the igloo
of snowballs we built to house them in.

You ask me: How does this begin?
and Why don’t other people want this?

Beneath the lamplight, I draw breath,
the freckles on your Scandinavian face

only even more abundant on the long
fingers of your elegant hands. I say:

It starts with the meeting of our eyes, and
Too often it is what people do not see.

Somehow I could tell you entered
the cabin, and before I unlock the door,

I check for the extra key beneath
the brick at the southwest corner.

Somehow I know it has been moved—
that it is not where it was before.

I imagine I can inhale the aroma
of your skin within the sweet scent

of the pine this cabin was built with.
I know how your aura moves across

any room, trailing those blue and gold lights—
how you must have listened to the wind

singing through the remaining leaves
of the trees in the late October rain.

I know what appears to be madness
sometimes can be love, that it is

something more inconsistent,
and then even more constant, and always

more beautiful than any of that—
so that it remains a mystery

that no one else, especially
the two of us, can understand.