Sometimes, It Helps to Read a Book

​Sometimes, it helps to read a book
And chase the dog out of the yard.
Moses himself is buried where
The polluted stream under the scarred

Ground flows. The polluted mountain
Puffs itself up, but not the mind,
Not the tendrils that descend
In the dusk. Your eyes are blind

Until you remove the suppuration,
“I will send away the northern foe,
To a land that is dry and desolate,
Where his stench and his infection flow.”

Elijah said: “Turn to God, 
Or turn to see that what you call god
Is the foul stream itself.” And the people
Looked beneath the clean facade.