58: coma, interlude 6

interlude

it is often said
requirements are required
of certain holy books:
one is that they
contain utterances
of the deity in a time and place
readers and hearers
know only as dust
between the fingers.
often, it’s said,
epics require this too.

two is that those
utterances may not be uttered
on the most current street,
kitchen, and bathroom,
where, standing sitting or walking,
where the children play
where the workers
turn the turnstile out
where the movie house lights
dim to rest til next night’s
brazen blotting out
of the stunning sky.

three is that all engines
of proof be melted into coins
for distribution of the lenders
and the counters or,
put differently,
we mutter the original
in as many translations
as make original
impossible.

Henry told me:
your fool arguments against
me are proof
of calling, his calling
to you. You are in the act
of seeking him.

and it’s true, I told him,
yes, I could always
train my eyes away from lightbulbs
casting false light.
I told him: Thor and Lucy,
I tell them: you shouldn’t
use your gun;
use the video games
I gave you under duress
and be happy with those;
but they insist on more,
and the gun they wield
in the faces of clerks
will be their wreckage,
which is just good sense
for me to say and warn.

then you would compare
my belief to a crime,
he said, laughing,
and I laughed too,
saying, no, and moreover, I said,
I once saw a miraculous thing,
at the site of the mountain pond,
the one above us in the mountains,
I, standing at the shore, the sky
perfectly round and blue
above the trees, the surface
of the water of that pond
flat as a sheet of glass,
when out in that pond’s
middle I saw a disruption,
a cracking of that surface,
and I heard a plop,
saw the last sun-hot gem of the jet
spout fall back into place,
because, we know, an object
moving down into the water
will form an opposing spout
formed by cavity and hydrostatics
and implosion, and soon, moments later,
the circles of water came,
driving against the shore grass,
circle after circle from that center
out there in the pond’s center.

it was an eagle bearing an egg,
a balloonist losing his glass eye,
an errant golfer’s unsuccess at par,
a little stone last to fall from the sky,
having lost its way, Henry said,
a nut flung by some flinging tree.

no, I said, it was a rock
I threw. I merely left that part out.

Post a Comment

Your email is never shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*