the potential of an electric wildness gathers
like filings to a field of magnets hidden in a room
that is shrouded by closed eyes and the bloom
of still-hot slag and sharp that we thought rather
than offer up our true name to the charge
that sang among us and around the sinews
that bound us we would look for something large
that would whisper that we were small – the pinnules
of a grander leaf by far and servants to a Spirit
that was in us and still foreign-fated death
to self-love and self-pity and them that fear it
those who whispered sacred words under their breath
yet trembled
but we shook not nor from slumber that sole seed
of lonesome sadness that the source of all our sin
and need to understand why in that quiet-hidden din
was yet the spark of our salvation where I spied indeed
that there were branching verdant tendrils of a searing
conscience – mine! – which grasped and moved among
the men whose hearts were open wide and bleeding -
feeding - so that every voice so raised had sung
and still I thought to steer them like some hardy child
or fool who shouted out the magic words
he found within some holy place and while
he did he thought himself a shepherd
yet dissembled
for the words were not his own but old
and still they were not those that he claimed
that he remembered from his fading youth, the same
as stories that his fathers’ fathers told and sold
as telling truths - whatever those may be –
but telling veritable lies of equal static
to a room of those with ears to hear and eyes to see
and minds ripped open by the moment to the automatic
thrill of joy at being there together in a place
where we were many then were one
where even God might show his face
obscured to whisper that he made us like his son
and temple
