FIRE'S THE NEW EVANGELIST

FIRE’S THE NEW EVANGELIST

 

Fire’s the new evangelist

in the churches of the trees

that enflames them into new crusades

in the seasonal holy land

of temperate September

when no one really cares

in the fullness and beauty of life

to be summoned anywhere

that isn’t here now

like asters in the tall, warm grass,

and every glowing stone,

every thought

the Dome of the Rock

in a city of jewels

worthy of their eyes.

Things seem suspended

like particles of dust

in an elixir of light

that holds everything alike

in the folds of its nurturing pervasiveness

like a manger of honey and water

where anyone can lay their head.

And there’s hardly a distinction

that can be held up

like a blade of grass

between the living and the dead

as if they both remembered each other

like something that wasn’t said,

a tenderness left undone,

a secret shared so long

they both realize

like a sister

in the features of a brother

they are born of the same mother.

Time is the slow voice of space

articulating the changes

in a human face

like the shifting sands

of the rivers that fray

like the fragile threads

of what was once

the strong rope of a river

in the deltas around my eyes.

Space may be vague,

but time is very specific

in the way everything lives and dies

with every breath we take,

as if we were sloughing

the skin of a cosmic snake

like a world we’d outgrown like water

when a morning mist

unspools over the lake

that once received us like swords.

 

PATRICK WHITE