No Saints
by Samuel Brammell
No saints. No incendiary shrubbery. Nothing fancy.
There is a garden on the other side of the fence
I’ve been watching the light move over the dogweed flowers
waiting for my epiphany. Two days now,
no seraphim, no bodhisattva, no miracle.
The blackfoot daisies are lifting their flirtatious eyes
they’re watching from behind the great mass of Mexican feather grass—
I hadn’t seen them, or the dead poha berry husks that lay beside them.
Just lately, I have been watching closer. God isn’t the right word,
but something is happening here. I don’t know if it’s enough—
all I know is that I am noticing
shades of purple I didn’t know existed on the sagebrush’s body
little delicacies of violet syllables,
the pale green flesh beneath them offers nothing at all
but I’m touching their life with my eyes, something is reaching back.
The thing flowers just before rain—a prophecy,
there will be water. Milk-streams of light from the nimbus;
and then, eternity. I saw this filthy crusted hunk of exoskeleton
planted on the table beside the ashtray.
As if in defiance of the clocks sadistic fingers,
a cicada erupted from the hollowed vessel of its tired body,
shattered the breeze as it carried its vibrating wild music,
eyes solid and red as mountain laurel seeds, the impossible
mosaic wings like stained glass beating with the desperation of the drowned.
No. Not a miracle, but something close—
blink. For an instant I am a child, I’m not sure if it’s a memory,
I don’t think it really happened—I am a child
my small chubby legs are running toward a body of moss green water
I jump and there with me hovering in its thick stagnant atmosphere,
a Koi fish with its omnipotent white scales sprayed orange, the feathery
skirt of fins, the deep eyes breathing sentience into the ripples
I ask, “what is holiness?”
No answer, not unless you count the way it moved through the still water.