Have you looked into the butterfly bushes today
or asked about when God would be ready to burn them?

The the oracle was in the tall grass
or so my father always said--
and we washed in ticks and leeches
to forget that humans weren't meant
for the edges of trails--
We have gravel in our sandals and in our bones--
I could feel broke-stone in my heels--
Purge me of this syrup blood--
Let them make me a hyacinth to
sip nectar from, measure out
my veins like a sugar bowl from
the mandibles of the ants--
I want to bleed like the rubber trees
and form scars of cedar sap--
So like good prophets we filled 
the nap sacks with toad eggs.
hatched them with moon lamps
and the heat of burning newspapers
and calendars never filled in--
we raised a colony that only eats porch light.
The toads wait to be fed metal bottle caps
from the hands of my father who
took eight years to learn to
speak their language--
I told the reeds I wanted to 
be a fox and eat water melon rinds
and talk to the swallow tails about
how many times they had visited 
God this week to deliver reports to him about
what they had seen the people doing--
I wonder if God was disappointed 
that I had only looked into the butterfly 
bushes once this week and it wasn't long
enough to hear what the cicadas  were
saying they had seen while they slept.
I asked them if God was feeling generous
or if they would burn this week
like Phoenix ferns or pussy willows--
I asked if they would be back
or if He had forgotten that there
are still people who remember that the
prophets sleep in the tall grass
and make holy water of mud and stagnant 
rain water. I told him I would always be
a person who looks for burning bushes
just to find swallow tails--
the kind who feeds toads bottle caps
and peels ticks from the backs 
of their knees.