Canto XVIII
Dan Beachy-Quick
…when he saw a child drinking water from her hands
he threw his cup away…
…when a mouse ate the crumbs from his poor man’s bread
he rethought his philosophy…
…lit his lantern in daylight to see if he could see
anything or anyone truly…
green fruit in noonlight
the olive breeze
bright like fish eyes dart
away
the tree is made of light
the patient wind
decides to stay
…thought in all things moved a soul
the lodestone draws into a metal rose the iron filings…
roof of mouth is
roof of heavens
the word is the same
starry fog
a thought thought
behind the teeth
…he who discovered what water is discovered the soul is
eternally self-moving…
a corpse that breathes
buried in thought
counts the olives one
by one the aster is
a purple flower the sun is
a yellow button on
the traffic of the stars
…the threads gave birth to themselves and wove a world
together, a god is the never-beginning-never-ending one…
…the whole tree is a single leaf he thought the letter g
unfurled on the stem of the deciduous throat…
…the soul a dry heat he thought the sun would pull
the moisture from his body leaving him sane and whole…