Two Steps Behind the Covenant

The primitive moves unseen in the wake of too much culture.
The Ancients would understand a Mark Rothko.
The Ancients have the mental and physical coordination
of human beings, yet they have no history, only evolution.
They can laugh, tell stories, and find shelter.

I am sorely devout although the day is longer than my praise.
I paint a little, and then the layering begins again.
My child is two steps behind the covenant
with evening measuring the field.
Her heartbeat is transcendental in the first few rows.
Her drawings are done in the service before the kiss of peace.

I can picture him in my studio, scraping the last extra
into the unknown.
I like the idea of sitting in a director's chair,
looking at the layers of paint inch forward.
I was right in letting you enter the room first
but wrong in letting go of the chapel.
I have tracked this bird through the rains that patter
on St. Peter's dome.
The king is caught in the paint, and I have to somehow
get him out of this room.
He gets as far as the collar of my favorite, red flannel.
I contemplate a god who paces in the edges.
The collective crush of compass points is also red.

The camels who carry our load have the best view.
The highway once belonged to us too,
but then the writers took over.
The story of John the Baptist changes on the evening news.
The wild men crouch in the desert of my escaping thought.
They fall short of my heart by a yard or so.
The scarecrows are now anchored.
The script hovers over the waters for the cameras to see.
     The readers are struggling on the staircase.

The copy editors are advancing in the age of newspaper museums.
The Trinity has been mixed into the columns.
The saying you are about to hear has been in the news
since design left culture standing in the dust.
Originally, there was one material and a matchmaker.
Corinthian guards plead with the merchants for more cloth.
Each object belongs either to thought
or a piece of the revolution.
They had forgotten his face so they did not know him.
The wheel of tribes progresses through the nations.