Cod Beck Reservoir

 

Day Eight

Wilderness is an exile

from this procedural wood.

The trees, ranked in line,

muster by the unwrinkled lake

beside a lawn which has been cut

in secret, with scissors. 

The closest to God I've ever been was rolling

beside a church, in the grass with a girl

with the sun on her tongue.

She deliberately kissed me under 

the peep-eye of a steeple.

Barefoot to the soundtrack buzz of dragonflies.

I think she threw me upwards, 

way beyond the belfry,

where bells don't dare intrude

though I felt a sort of reverb in

the transept of my bright heart

'til I fell. Fell so gladly.

Falling tender, like the sunlight.

This boy ought to be tattooed

with the sober scent of his own black earth.

He's fixed on baggy jeans and rollies.

He'll know too late that any kind of height

can only be achieved

in the valley of his own yielding heart.

You can't pilot dragonflies

from a mowed lawn.