In the first year of this brand new revelation,
we still had to work for our fruit. Long summer nights
spent plucking out locusts, mornings woken early
to try to taste rain on our tongues. They promised us
that planting would come easy, in this part
of the world, the praises rolling from our tongues
like milk and honey in the streams. We all
gathered in the town square to dance for rain,
we all whispered breathlessly about its absence.
Only the little boy, running around
in only his loincloth, saw the world
for what it was: another translucent atmosphere,
another red shift of our bodies, a lullaby
stretched out to the length of a season. The boy
swallows, drinks it all in
in the same way we would drink wine:
slowly, first, and then accelerating
rapidly, until finally, even the assembled elders
have no choice but to bow, the illumination
of their shock and awe, just barely enough
to light up the fields and make them grow.
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