Outside across the narrow street
your dark evangelical tree
in a red rapture early Friday morning
before the clarifying sun comes up
your pruned evangelical tree
impervious to spiritual symmetry
here in the brimstone city center
darning the worn, pinched sock
of your mocking sleeplessness
prayer with a toe exposed, tree
cut off where the crown should be
adrenalin life in a fold of the night
pacing via eyes, instead of cold feet.

Your dark evangelical tree
robber-limbed, sharp-boned,
holding on determinedly.

No matter if you don't even half-believe
in your dark evangelical tree
in a red rapture early Friday morning
before the liquefying sun comes up:
the dark evangelical tree
has many times been stubbornly seen
cavorting in Eden, rigid in limbo,
aflame in perfected, powdery Hell.

Lower the blind, shut off the TV
one last fleeting, curious peek
at the dark evangelical tree
that won't be there after you sleep
sleep the black at the heart of the tree,
sleep the red inside its Beware.



�2007 by Lisa Gordon