Messengers

He said, “God is the light of day.”

Then what's the dark of night?

He said God is: the bright white wine

and the inky red that stains

the enormous void we bear

and the thing we bear it in

all we do not know and how we know it.

Tell him my mind flutters and flits

over a flaming field in mid-summer.

That deadens the soul.

There is no chance of rain

and the sun is set to remain

remote for years without dying.

Nothing will change, not direction

nor this weak weakening effort to alight

in shaded safety. Tell him this then,

approximately where I can be found,

on a field aflame in dead summer unable to land.
                                                             - J. O'Brien