That Young Man

Dear God,

whom I have come to less and less understand,

dear God Dear God,

whose vast almighty hand evaporated into myth

dear god I do believe

that lonesome young man

caught you dragonfly desert cactus bloom beautiful

mirage

caught you like a woman catches AIDS

catches love

Only this possession couldn’t be passed on.

He caught you, incommunicable disease.

I see him sometimes, even though my eyes

are deliberately averted—I see him

sitting in that hot sun on the stone edge

of that well talking to that sizzling woman

who insulted him and him thirsty and mad as a

mirage,

I mean crazy, else how could he sit there talking,

passing time of day illegally, with a woman.

God, he told her his secret. Who he was,

who he thought he was,

and where it was likely to take him,

who I think he was beginning to suspect he was,

and scared crazy in the blister of that heat

by what he knew and what he had not,

until that moment, ever said.