SEVEN BENDS, THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF JUNE

Photo from Unsplash.

i

ja no i imagine
if you spend a lot of time
in the wild or whatever,
the rocks et cetera,

you come to think things
that i can’t, people like me
who thought it would be nice
to find some woods
one afternoon driving back
a hundred miles from the only
dmv i could find with
appointment slots
before august:

that’s not, you know, 
a prophetic mind space.

ii

the days are almost as long
now as they ever are; the wet side
of the slope is thick with wineberries and
jewelweed and everything feels slow;

even the virus which once felt
like drowning in hot soda
is bored by its own horror,
joylessly marches up the rutted
soggy ceilings of our brains.

but john was all about the shortness of
things: tempers, temples, necks,

and the million little explosions 
through which in every second
the peace of the woods calls forth its
blessed seeming—john saw blessed seaming 
endlessly.

he knew the wild not because 
it was some solid thing:
not some faithful old romance of light.

iii

not a refuge nor a temple, places like this,
but under every leaf more prophecy:

after this will be a new earth too,
a new everything.