An Arbitrary Limit

And now God speaks in stranger ways, as if the merely-strange
were not already the cause of great ruin among the people

The Speaker becomes the speech and God becomes the Stranger
and we in our ruin must opt for the void or the voice

The quixotic or the quotidian: Two orbits of no overlap
never a chance for commingling. John is not polarized
in his heart of hearts to Mary in her soul of souls

Impossible since the stampede of Strangeness broke in two
the single rod across which the ends had been declared.

John in the hothouse of nurture
Mary in farming fields of requirement
where hard lessons are dug up like root vegetables

as she drums up constant fear of an early frost
John examines his hands and cannot remember callouses of long ago