Hermeneutics

All winter she’s been growing more powerful.

Radiant, says the man at the bar.

Voluptuous, says the docent.

Nervy, says God.

All winter her soul has been juddering.

It feels like drinking gold flakes!

The word sleeps inside the stone.

The wind tongues the underside of the lake.

Inside the rifle scope of time, God

teaches her Grounding Techniques

through his emissary, a Certified Therapist.

Beetles bore their dirty traffic into pine trees.

God says, You cling to deixis

like a life raft. Here, you

say. Now, you say. All winter, you say, like it means

something, days crossed off your compulsive

calendar, wind tied to your wrist like

a pet. This dumb hunger for

fixity! I made your cells

to shed, says God. See them

everywhere, everywhere.

She bites her lip till it bleeds.

Who wouldn’t immanentize the eschaton, if they could,

build heaven on earth in the backyard?

She wouldn’t, is who.

Day a slit-throated ewe.

She wears a prayer around her neck

in another language, no clue

what it says.

Who will translate the prayer?

Listen: she loved a happy libertine

and thought that was heaven.

To ground herself

she strips berries from the juniper bushes.

Well, says God,

Alexander the Great dyed his hair

saffron. We are all

made fools in this world.