You don’t need new words
or even new ways of putting

one word next to another.
No, you simply need to be

touched by the god who
has you tell what was not

in your mind. You just need
to let it come the way it will

as it leaps across the land,
skipping the way you usually

try to build a fire, teaching
you how to drive through

the dark. You don’t need to
prepare except that you

already have in all the
lost pages and the sounds

that dissolved on your tongue.
At that moment, you gather

up the years like a shawl
and wrap yourself in them,

one corner touching another.
Everything you have done

is suddenly useful, and it turns
out there’s a  pattern after all.