Religious Experience

Religious Experience

My first New York blizzard ended up being downgraded
to a winter storm. I kind of had a feeling. I liked walking
to the subway in it before its reduction in rank, being inside
of it while I parted the sidewalk traffic like Heston in that Classic Movie.
I was still new here, a tourist in my own town, out of season.
The wind was like a brick wall and the fruit stands had iced over.

In my empty two-bedroom the power flickered out so I took
that heavy silence as a blessing and slid under the covers to dry.
The water on the sill seemed to turn blood red like a bush on fire,
while not being consumed by the flames and then the frogs came
and then the locusts. Thousands of them and all night long.
I couldn’t sleep and then I couldn’t not sleep anymore. I woke
hours later to silence. No frogs. No locusts. Vanished forever
as if Moses had stood up and said, alright, enough already.

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