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.
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.
To ground herself, she strips berries
from juniper bushes.
Well, says God, Alexander the Great
dyed his hair saffron. We are all
made fools in this world.

Credit

From The Trailhead (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) by Kerri Webster. Copyright © 2018 Kerri Webster. Reprinted by permission of the author.