That fire at the mouth of the flare stack rising
more than three-hundred feet above the refinery
contorts as it feeds on the invisible current
of methane produced by the oil’s distillation
process like a monster, the nonstop spasm of it
lumbering upwards into the dark Newark
night like a sack made of orange parachute fabric
an awkward number of gorillas get it on in.
I would worship it. The motion, the heat, the unapologetic
knack of the element to yank the appliance
plug from its outlet, filling the big blue business-
suite of my head with nothing but its own
wordlessness and light. Not now, not knowing
what I can’t unknow, but back on the grasslands
before we ever came to harness it I would bow
down among the seething life of that primitive
interior and worship the fire taking one bright
liberty after another. Done listening to fellow
passengers tweaking the fine points. Done rubbing
the dead end of thinking like a spent torch
against the cave’s painted walls to make it burn
better. As the train slows down as the track
curves around the body of water the fire reflects in,
it is a form of worship. What is it in me that
hasn’t yet been killed with reason, habit, through
long atrophy or copied so beyond its master
it parses like the last will and testament of a moth-
eaten cardigan? It dumps its nice adrenaline
into my system nights I hear the crisp steps of deer
on fallen leaves and stop or when looking up
beneath baroque snow or when I lean over the
banister along the border of a strong waterfall.
All good and well. But the endless hyperactive
plumage exploding from this toxic aviary, this sun
of industry descended from the lightning strike,
obscures its diabolism with a Vegas brightness
so that what there is to fear in it instead excites
me up a biochemical peak from the far side of which
my own voice, grizzled with a wisdom unknown
to me in waking life, reminds me of the conjuror
who grew distraught because he sensed the forces
he had stirred up with his art would not be
mastered by it. It rattles tomorrow’s paperwork
where it hangs from the branches of the ancient
timber trees. It messes with my reception, whereas
I do not wish my reception to be messed with.
It tells me to be careful with my worship—that if this,
too, is a resource, then they have ways to tap it.
Copyright © 2011 by Timothy Donnelly. Used with permission of the author.
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