Seer

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—Moses 6

Even as a young child he saw in ways others did not
When his mother sang him the old stories
he would open his inner eyes and see
the lanky cerulean legs of clouds
as they walked across the open sky
In the footprints of cats on the earth
he saw the settling distillations of treesong

He saw under the surface of things
the other world that was always
breaking through into this one
The glistening ways the colors of God
shone through in the voices of frogs
and in the redolent smell of the mosses’ yearning
He knew that the earth was God’s body

He perceived an intricate connectedness
between the cedar leaves’ whisper swish
and the glimmer of the raven’s wing
He saw the sound of the mountains’ exhale
nestled under the blankets of their winter snows
Saw the flavors of autumn winds
tickling delight in angels’ tongues

But he could not see God in the people
among whom he walked in the marketplace
with their waxy hearts weighed down with
greed and lust and their dull yellow ears
listening only for the tinny sound of praise
These beings who could not perceive
beyond the length of their own ugly noses

Their children who mocked his inability
to articulate why in the games he played
there was no triumph at another’s loss
but only a lilt of melody when a bee’s
joy erupted into ecstatic light
These children whose laughter taunted him
like giants who jeered their rancor for the small

All the people hate me he told God
that day in the meadow with
the lilies of the field catching fire all around them
And not until he anointed his eyes with dirt
did he learn to see through the mire
the holiness that abides incarnate
in every breathing soul

And only then did he speak
of the things he saw beyond