In the end no insight grand & electric
gathered me to safety, just two feet against
the ground & the walking they together made
into an away from my years thirsted & furred,
a forest’s unwavering insistence that it be seen
both as a forest & as its trees & at the same time,
the way the saints say God sees us in our multitudes,
our silvered metropolises, & at the same time
the spinning center of wishes we call the soul.
Like the saints I have learned that God is a force
of our own insistence. About the soul
I have learned it goes on. As long as you & your
body will let it. In the circumstance of fire
it is impossible to identify the moment
the tree ceased to be & the moment that flame
became ash. It is impossible to analyze
a narrative constructed from ashes, which I assume
must be true of anyone who to describe their living
rightly must use the phrase living through. In order
to appreciate a silence one must learn
to translate the sounds one is used to ignoring
by calling them silence. Leaf song. Bird scatter.
The animal you’ll never see enlarging its pupil
to shift through different washes of night.
One must let fire become the beast that teaches.
Lord, let hunger become the last thing I’ll lose.