An olive tree, aflame in my mind, awake in the wee hours,
burns the light of a thousand rivers of gold oil, the heat
of a thousand leaves open in the fields of scriptural truth,
joy of reveling in a fruiting orchard of the loveliest light.

After I isolated for two winters and a half, the odd world
opened from a very small place—one where I was told
never to use the words very or never—and swung wider
than the berth of a ship christened for an Arctic explorer.

I emerged from a dossier of tumbleweed in the dunes
and the beautiful elk bones lying bare on a riverbank.
I would hike rim to rim with a drum of human tears
slung over my side, content to brush the moonbeam

ringing the periphery of the dusk. The old adage goes,
never say never. Indeed, the world would pause time
and again in a future only Christ foreknew. Did we
listen to our living prophets, pathologists, and poets?

Awake, the midnight hour is about to burst into flame
out of its own stardust field. Always, the world is blue
and alive, haplessly fueling an invisible war, consumed
by our instances of this human, reckless diary of fury.

Photo by Lucio Patone on Unsplash