Arson Clears The Way

That crucial internal gaze

of kindness required

setting God on fire

(yes, the impulse arrived

in midst of a January night),

then incinerating medieval constraints

while tramping through dogma’s

barbed-wire bounds, where reason,

meandering walks through cemeteries

and slow saturation in silence

became his trusted bolt cutter

as he began sensing rivers

of love course through the body, every part

more clearly seen, pernicious

doubts galactic dreams, every nugget

held, kissed with tenderness,

as clouds of curling smoke and ash

lifted spirals of gratitude,

labyrinths of wonder,

from what remained

of that charred, deluded,

hallowed ground.