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.