The Hermits

Warmth activates the sugars,

and sugars rally

in the gorse, in the flowers

it sees with, the scent

that is its voice,

the nontoxic fragrant wood

good for cutlery, and for burning,

though it flares out quickly,

unlike smoldering peat. Are they converting

sugars of their loneliness

to conviction? Burning

their sugars on the wicks

of their frailty,

one can nearly read by them,

as Fillan in his own cave read

by the light of  his broken arm,

one of the horrible miracles

of the times — 

St. Fillan, the Human Flashlight,

patron of the mentally ill — 

an unenviable between-worlds

position.

Whereas marsh orchids,

fully in this one,

change their clothes

out in the open, hard candy

in their mouths,

the sugars plump, round, smooth,

unlike seawater’s jagged molecules,

which when drunk like anger

will tear through you.

Like bitterness, desiccate you.

To survive, suffering burns

the strength of the afflicted. If,

left in Fillan’s cave,

bonds of the stricken

were loosened by morning,

his spirit had intervened to convert

the molecules of their madness,

and still later did smugglers stash there

some of those little things

that make life worth living.

The highly edible

sweet gorse flowers

produce a coconut-flavored wine

if one enjoys the luxury of time,

and a tea prescribed in cases

of uncertainty,

for those who appear

to have lost all hope.