Offer firewood, strike up a flame. You won’t 

get anything out of him while he’s 

shivering. What you want is the statuesque 

gesture of confidence, the clarity 

derived from a place at the deity’s 

right hand. Keep the coercion to a minimum 

when wrestling with a spiritually

disheveled higher being. Your position

can sour, leaving you with nothing but

pine needles in your hands. Ask 

the most urgent questions first: why

are armies, and is it malignant, and who

keeps tabs on the status of the platypus?

Remember information is secondary

to your purpose. The voice matters most:

that melody can repair all the torn pages

but first you have to recognize what you’ve caught

in your own human hands, on an ordinary

city street, in the middle of March.