Advice (Inspired by Thomas Merton)

Let the heavens open and drop angels
Of ice cream growing slow motion wings.

Hold the last judgment in your hand
Like an ant hill gone mad.

Learn the philosophy of sand
And the old man with a staff
Who catches fish in dry wells,
Crying out that those fish
With fluttering gills and whispering fins
Have told him secrets profound
And impossible, secrets
That slam against the sky
And lock the stars in place
Like dry faucets.

Then take your wife
With all the silence of your bones
Stewed in the scream of your flesh
And she will be, even for an old
Man with an arid fountain, fresh.

T. Baker