by Marie La Viña
“I see people looking like trees and walking,” said the blind man,
after Jesus touched him the first time.
What he said baffled even the human god.
“They are walking around with arms outstretched,” he said.
“Their palms brush the sky. The stars slip through their long fingers.
The moonlight spills into a river and darts away like a school of silver fish
while the leaves moan in the trees in a hundred human voices.
Branches argue with wind. Locusts buzz in the night’s tangled hair.”
He asked in wonder, “Is this the world?”
Then the god lifted his holy palms, wet with spit,
and held them over the man’s eyes.
Twice touched by him, the man muttered, “Wait.”
But already he was healed.