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.