The Book of Rachel

by Steve Evans

 

She is the maker of worlds.

All creatures listen when she speaks.

The oceans know her voice.

When Rachel reaches out her hand,

the stars tremble into place.

Rachel is the sweetness of summer

and the violence of a winter storm,

but the rip of thunder,

like lightning’s gaudy flash,

cannot describe her.

Her skin is soft as smoke.

She is the nectar and the bee.

Gravity rides the curve of her thigh,

her eye on pleasure’s horizon.

Yet these are petty whispers.

Were you to linger at her lips

you could not know her beauty.

Armies hesitate at her collarbone,

empires at the tenderness of her wrist.

Kingdoms rise and fall at her hips.

No song naming her can name her.

You might as well taste rain on your tongue

and call it a language.

Say she is sacred and she turns away.

Any offered praise evaporates.

So many stories told.

It is said that the Book of Rachel

burns true believers with their own desire,

that to read it is to be drawn into

a brilliance beyond awakening.

The Book of Rachel was thought lost

but that is impossible

because it was never written.

There is no book but only ever Rachel,

and the stories that she tells of herself.