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the wilderness rose as incense
godliness stopped chasing us after hyssop was no longer found.
smoke, suddenly, misspelled.
now no more than a crooked few.
seeds scattered like the teeth of lions long extinct.
absent thunder, memories lightning through us each time we cross snowmelt’s stream.
water falling on rock the only almost-human voice.
pine needle sift a music the elderly remember, but barely.
—before he hardened into he.
read about but never before seen.
before she softened into—
as if listening for a landscape beyond us.
a boy ago, a girl.
in the book, it was written we would know we had arrived when we arrived. 
the wilderness rose as incense
I say arid and the room says storm