First Rain on a Burned Car

The closeness of life to death near the corpse of a car at the roadside. You hear the raindrops on the rusty metal before you feel them on the skin of your face. The rains have come, redemption after death. Rust is more eternal than blood, more beautiful than the color of flames. The shock absorbers are calmer than the dead who won't quiet down for a long time. A wind that is time alternates with a wind that is place, and God remains down here like a man who thinks he's forgotten something, and will stick around until he remembers. And at night, like a wondrous melody, you can hear man and machine on their slow journey from a red fire to a black peace and from there to history to archaeology to the beautiful strata of geology:

that too is eternity and a deep joy. Like human sacrifice that became animal sacrifice, then loud prayer, then prayer in the heart, and then no prayer at all.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Sep/Oct 1996
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