That fire at the mouth of the flare stack rising

more than three-hundred feet above the refinery

contorts as it feeds on the invisible current

of methane produced by the oil's distillation

 

process like a monster, the nonstop spasm of it

lumbering upwards into the dark Newark

night like a sack made of orange parachute fabric

an awkward number of gorillas get it on in.

 

I would worship it. The motion, the heat, the unapologetic

knack of the element to yank the appliance

plug from its outlet, filling the big blue business-

suite of my head with nothing but its own

 

wordlessness and light. Not now, not knowing

what I can't unknow, but back on the grasslands

before we ever came to harness it I would bow

down among the seething life of that primitive

 

interior and worship the fire taking one bright

liberty after another. Done listening to fellow

passengers tweaking the fine points. Done rubbing

the dead end of thinking like a spent torch

 

against the cave's painted walls to make it burn

better. As the train slows down as the track

curves around the body of water the fire reflects in,

it is a form of worship. What is it in me that

 

hasn't yet been killed with reason, habit, through

long atrophy or copied so beyond its master

it parses like the last will and testament of a moth-

eaten cardigan? It dumps its nice adrenaline

 

into my system nights I hear the crisp steps of deer

on fallen leaves and stop or when looking up

beneath baroque snow or when I lean over the

banister along the border of a strong waterfall.

 

All good and well. But the endless hyperactive

plumage exploding from this toxic aviary, this sun

of industry descended from the lightning strike,

obscures its diabolism with a Vegas brightness

 

so that what there is to fear in it instead excites

me up a biochemical peak from the far side of which

my own voice, grizzled with a wisdom unknown

to me in waking life, reminds me of the conjuror

 

who grew distraught because he sensed the forces

he had stirred up with his art would not be

mastered by it. It rattles tomorrow's paperwork

where it hangs from the branches of the ancient

 

timber trees. It messes with my reception, whereas

I do not wish my reception to be messed with.

It tells me to be careful with my worship-that if this,

too, is a resource, then they have ways to tap it.