Finding Place

A fire in the pasture undulates
of blue and white and yellow flower,
a fire like a snake, it would seem, iridescent 

by sunlight and undulant in the wind.
Here one will understand the Nazarene’s joy,
awash in the lilies of his own field, a spicery
of uncommon radiance in a common hour
rising from the dark, speluncular sod. 

Consider, he said. Simply consider. Flowers
catching light like the scales of a serpent’s skin,
a yellow apple sun delicious to the taste,
and temptations to joy irrepressible! 

The kingdom of heaven found on earth
is like a pasture, a strange, little kingdom
full of spicery, the undulant and speluncular,
all the words with which we choose to frame it.

In this life we find the peaceable kingdom
within, then above, beneath, and all around.
What can a person driven by grandiosity
know of the quiet, hidden God found here?