this dumb hunger for fixity!

All winter she’s been growing more powerful.
Radiant, says the man at the bar.
Voluptuous, says the docent.
Nervy, says God.
All winter her soul has been juddering.
It feels like drinking gold flakes!
The word sleeps inside the stone.
The wind tongues the underside of the lake.
Inside the rifle scope of time, God
teaches her Grounding Techniques
through his emissary, a Certified Therapist.
Beetles bore their dirty traffic into pine trees.
God says, You cling to deixis
like a life raft. Here, you
say. Now, you say. All winter, you say, like it means
something, days crossed off your compulsive
calendar, wind tied to your wrist like
a pet. This dumb hunger for
fixity! I made your cells
to shed, says God. See them
everywhere, everywhere.
She bites her lip till it bleeds.
Who wouldn’t immanentize the eschaton, if they could,
build heaven on earth in the backyard?
She wouldn’t, is who.
Day a slit-throated ewe.
She wears a prayer around her neck
in another language, no clue
what it says.
Who will translate the prayer?
Listen: she loved a happy libertine
and thought that was heaven.
To ground herself
she strips berries from the juniper bushes.
Well, says God,
Alexander the Great dyed his hair
saffron. We are all
made fools in this world.

[Kerri Webster {1971- }, 'Hermeneutics', from Poetry]