the wilderness rose as incense

godliness stopped chasing us after hyssop was no longer found.

smoke, suddenly, misspelled.

now no more than a crooked few.

seeds scattered like the teeth of lions long extinct.

absent thunder, memories lightning through us each time we cross snowmelt’s stream.

water falling on rock the only almost-human voice.

pine needle sift a music the elderly remember, but barely.

—before he hardened into he.

read about but never before seen.

before she softened into—

as if listening for a landscape beyond us.

a boy ago, a girl.

in the book, it was written we would know we had arrived when we arrived.