They told me, “We’re quite busy here.”

I told him, “Stay away from me.”

I lay awake. I watched the wind

Unwind the branches of a tree.

I passed exams, unpacked and packed,

Ordered and cancelled. Time went by

Like a foreign-language broadcast. Then

I saw a river in the sky.

Clear as the air but bright as ice,

It let the sun through to the wheat.

It rippled like a flare of song.

It pounded like a runner’s feet.

Down here, a form rocked in the surf.

A sidewalk stain was dirty red.

I saw the miracle reversed,

And what had been alive was dead.

And yet the flood of light above

Only swelled stronger, like a storm

Of joy, a conquest of delight,

A dream there was no waking from.