Phil Flott

It's in me

Through the lightning burning the hay,

hail beating the corn,

the storm ripping off gates,

through the ice locking growth,

the snow and dark of winter,

I see a tower,

suspicion of light beyond clouds,

flame melting glazed ice off woods.

I hear the crackling of that quiet

where the still center is—

behind the layers of the domes

of the turnings of the worlds of the universe.

I can smell it

beyond the burning of brown leaves,

past the endless expanse of blue, of dry autumn.

Mostly I preserve it all

when I have been stopped in my flowing.

I know the germ of it in me,

its gravitation,

in my bones.

A lightening

not bound to laws of science,

but above them,

no violation.

His Origin Is From of Old

A long time ago,

when phloem and xylem

grew seedling grasses,

horses needed only three toes

and were frightened of rams.

Coal was growing in the swamps,

gold an unneeded commodity.

He came from ancient times,

before Louisiana sugar cane flourished

or Georgia pine trees grew knots.

The river flowed as mere spit

of the snows;

streams awaited

slivers of fish that

small Kodiak mice pawed out of the rapids.

Birds were pushing clouds from the sky,

spiders weaved sunbeams to earth.

All this time he prepared

a spectacular home for me.

He drew me the flat land of Nebraska,

squiggled the Missouri to the east

and Sandhills to the west.

Cold never infringed on the heat.

I would be able to flourish.

Phil Flott is a retired priest. He has been published in Agape, Bez n Co, Spirit Fire, Raven’s Perch, and others.