Ephram Pratt Experiences a Burning Joy
Ephram Pratt Experiences a Burning Joy
by Jack e Lorts
Snow exiting holes in the sky,
leading legends into
the backhoe wilderness
of existence,
the elements eliciting
a fragrant joy
mixed with an elixir
of pungent rosemary
torn from the path
of incoming badgers,
raccoons, foxes,
and other wild things.
Is it because of
the pumping blood
that the vision we see
causes an erasure
of the sights and sounds
we first experienced
in those deaf moments
of grief and joy
we knew while
tendering soft prayers
into the sky
like burning grass?
This is like a creation story, told from the limited perspective of the first line “leading legends” into explaining the origins of things. First come the elements, last the host of specific animals germane to the perceivers’ experience mixed with “rosemary,” a particular favorite, and “other wild things.” But the last are torn from the path of the first in their “fragrant joy” that gets erased by the “pumping blood” that comes later. Something is lost in the new “vision” from the initial “sights and sounds we first experienced,” the primitive notion of “snow exiting holes in the sky,” while “tendering soft prayers into the sky.” As in Genesis, there is a fall from an innocent sensibility into a more experienced one. An imaginative, evocative, and different way of looking at humanity’s coming of age.