Jeremiad

In all that is possible, there is nothing

more wondrous than what is.

al-Ghazālī

If it’s believing that you’re after, brother,

believe this garrulous world itself, believe

the scene that’s open always to inspection,

this candid space that harbors no reflection

of a somewhere much like this, like this

but minus loss, minus misery, minus mystery.

Who was it then that first required a leap of faith

from this inquiring body’s dangerous brain?

What prompted such devotion to what’s not?

Who was it so despised this ancient tangled world

that they’d as soon forsake their complex flesh

for the airless, bloodless simplicities of death?

If what you’re after is after all belief, dear girl,

you’d best embrace each season’s vacant blue,

the blistering stain of wildfire in the feathered sky.

Believe, if it’s belief you seek, the faraway nearby,

the breath of something long forgotten,

the imminent arrival of all you never noticed.

Indeed, believe away without reserve

your haptic, purblind flesh, the urgent,

acrid odors coiling through the auditory air.

No need to disregard, no urgency to disbelieve,

this evening’s dreaming nightjar too, the phantom

flutter vanished in your searching headlight’s glare.

Believe, if believe you must, the whirring noise

words make, their limpid meanings long since lost,

the garbled messages expressly meant for you.

DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. His work has recently appeared in Tar River, Blue Unicorn,Whistling Shade, Neologism, Consilience Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Innisfree Poetry,The Decadent Review, Water Wheel, Revue{R}évolution, Kairos, and other journals throughout the US, Canada, Europe and the Middle East. His first collection, Tarantula Season, is scheduled for release in 2023.