Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Ghosts In The Olive Trees

* Jesus pray for me
* Noah pray for me

+----- "Ghosts In The Olive Trees; The Thoughts Of The Dove Sent Out By Noah" 

To see, for the first time in
a long time, the apical branch of
an olive tree is like seeing
a resurrected dove, it is
the disjointed thin line between
consciousness and dream,
abstracted memory and
true reality of a present moment.
I remember the apocalyptic
storm day, the hours my earth stood
still, the vehement waves,
the bullish, intractable, inconsolable
winds. I have nightmares of
the din of my dead kin in their final
moments, the muffled gagging
of beaks trying to gargle, feathers
scattered on the crests
and foam
of indignant seas. This leaf, then, is a sign
of the times, a totem of resilience
for all those whose life and story
were swept away, antediluvian
golden age when none knew
the relationship between
debauchery and elemental wrath.
Its as if my cousin, aunt and nephews
are crying out, “Tell Noah
that to learn from others’ mistakes
is the most fitting way to bury
one’s dead."
(In the new Earth)


-----Genesis 8:1-12
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible. After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him

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