_23. A Vision

Striding around a cobbled uphill corner
I am confronted by a nimbus vision and overcome,
a stratospheric cloud body opening
itself above the collapsing roofs of Asyranya
and inflating marvelously, as ornate as the
high, lucid domes of the Haghia Sophia and as
deliberate as the rows of praying figures on
mosques’ carpets; I stop still as a photograph
of myself in shock. The bricks of the low
wall beside me are molten with knowing when
I sit on them, the afternoon sweaty and young,
and a child appears on a bicycle veering
down, downhill strobing neon-colored paper
threaded between the spokes of his
too-large vehicle (God what a beautiful boy)
but I dare not leave the cloud,
traversed now and again by hawks at a thousand
feet, small as the ants that wriggle like
live raisins up my bag while I’m distracted
by the pulse of the hillside, until a sudden
girl of seven or eight in an orange shirt
and dirty sweat-grow bottoms ventures “hello,”
but fades quickly back into the house when I
smile wildly back because all around
me this poem is happening and
I am so struck I can barely hold
what is inside of me in,
shit, breath and these words all
shifting uneasily to be released,
the leaf underfoot transformed into a glistening fish
and all the while the sky conducting
its operatic movements through me
and into the earth,
I am lightning-rod and cymbal,
conveyor of light
and keeper of words.