Hierophany

by Adam Edell


                Need to get out to the desert this year.
                New Mexico? Arizona? Nevada?
                Sand, arched wolves, a full-bellied moon, eclipsed…

They touched their instruments like sacred objects,
notes floating upon an ashen incantation.
What I heard was "yeah, yeah"
but what I saw was my father at my age,
a wife and a child on the way.
Saw a row of blue corn, bending their bean-stalked ears towards starlight,
listening for those whispered glimmers,
shed a century before.
Crossed paths with a blue-eyed husky,
his questionmark tail aloft that low spring breeze.
We harvested sunchoke
(Winter roots born
from ragged, slumbering soil),
their sad sweetness, a burden of the last frost.
That drone goes on / you feel like you're lost,
like they forgot about you
leaning against a brick symphonic wall with one foot in a puddle.
But upon opening eyes, the reforming melody
the unpocketed smile, the barest hint of rhythm,
an awoken cymbal among brushed snakeskins.

They crash together in a new song,
with every wave comes a reunion of what you long for.

And so why does it hurt to be so rewarded?