Prophecies of the 5th Dimension

Eric Haggart : Angel Oak

0.

Once I was praying and saw that the longing of the whole world fit

into the smallest acorn. Later I heard that a saint named Julian had

seen the same thing in darkest of ages across time and water.

So I wonder what visions bloom in your

still hour when the earth stops around your breath

and all you know is that your heart’s on fire.

I.

There was an orchestra on a star, and you

were in the orchestra playing kettle drums.

And the drums were the center of the concerto

hurling it away from a dozen black holes, and the

music swirled around your every gleaming struck beat.

And a violin humbly snuck into the finale, making your

finish the power you always knew it must be.

II.

You found the house in the middle of a forest you’d come

through many routes as a child but never seen a built thing in.

And the moment you saw it you knew it made itself a hidden thing

to the eyes of everyone else, even insects. Only you could ascend

the tree to the seamless door, only you saw the wonder of every

emerging room. And only you felt the velvet of air as the walls

disappeared, showing you how to be held.

III.

The sound that shook you was your heart

thundering your ribcage to vapor, turning you to spirit.

The fear is power once you’re falling through the zeroes

of altitude, a droplet driving downward, in gravitational

surrender. There is no loss in the jump, in the slight lean

into nothing that is all that’s needed for magnificence.

IV.

Understand this dark river you’ve come down, no stops

between continental shores. Consider the nights with

drenched paddle in hand, muscle burning away thought.

There was that one patch in the starless black quilt of night stitched

into next night in which the sky turned luminous around a comet so

unearthly, you struggled later to believe it. That hour or minute, you

saw the shapes of trees protecting you, the slap of broad tail coming

down in the water and on the other bank.

The beavers came up from their maze below to watch you drift by,

their eyes solemn, acknowledging the long waters you traveled

to be the first to discover that they, in fact, were the secret architects

of Macchu Picchu, Stonehenge, the hanging gardens of Babylon.

As you turned the bend into the rapids again, you heard them sing

a hymn of wonder.

V.

And then the one tree spoke as it grew around you, reciting back-to-back

histories of every living thing it had seen or heard of. Since before the time

men began burning down everything they couldn’t take.

Except for it. It told you it saw you coming, five hundred ringed

years after air turned into war. Not because you are a prophet,

or even an exceptional warrior, but because it saw you see it

the first time you crept around its circumference with a burning

heart, quiet as moss.