ISSUE: Winter 2004
Black mite over the page, furious meander
of a period untethered.
Black ant over my toes
lifts by chambers like a lock.
Simple hydraulics, says my friend Simeon,
out-hauling the ineffable.
Water is not water.
That’s how He walked His walk.
Faith works by metaphor, carnivorous.
The bread is flesh;
stones are “fleeced with moss”
and therefore sheep
in Wordsworth’s example,
and can’t be parsed into tenor or vehicle.
The light of the moon is the light of the sun.
You can’t unfasten shine—
ride whatever arrives.
Bird shits not an inch from me.
Something in that tree wants in on this story.
The book’s open so the mite
and ant alight while we doze at the feet
of the Savior among collegial tulips.
Enter Girl with Flashcard—What is religion?
An almost feasible question the day
before graduation.
What’s copied on the other side?
We’ll rise like insect apostles, I pray,
dispel our scrawling and all false gospels
to meet in the sweet by and by
where we go without saying.
