1.

         After a film by Parviz Kimiavi

The slender dervish lifts the rock to his lips,
sways. In the low, parched trees, 
he cradles each in the phone wires he cuts
off his neighbors’ lines to make strange
necklaces of the branches. His children sold 
their deaf father’s garden as a stage for faith,
his turning a mystic’s ecstasy, lissome arms
channeling what paying pilgrims seek,
the desert invitation.

2.

In 1990, I wandered a bazaar in Albany, NY 
before the Knick for the message of The Dead. 
Celebrants in open air, the spinners’ 
Waterhouse hair, altered followers after a miracle  
I wouldn’t part with, not for blotter acid or
psalms of smoke. Outside their circles, a voyeur 
of closed-eyed whirlings meant to be observed— 
they taped the seance of Drums / Space, waiting 
for Jerry’s sermon to bless the eyes of the world.

3.

Sundays, I pass the visible church, the living 
picture of our town’s wanting, unsure if it is weeds
or wheat, hoping shows will grant an audience
in God’s seventh day mind. I know our garden’s 
no place a wanderer would one day call a shrine, 
the slate we stole from a retaining wall 
to make a base for outdoor fires, the rest sculptures 
my love haloed with a barrel’s ring. Faith is a moving
silence, the open secret of our solid dust.

*

Max Heinegg is the author of Good Harbor which won the inaugural Paul Nemser Prize from Lily Poetry Press in 2022. His second book, Going There, is forthcoming later this year. His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Thrush, Nimrod, Kestrel, and Crab Creek Review, among others.

Find him on the web at www.maxheinegg.com