the sound of his incantations
hung like a fertile cloud in the air
till it became locked in an embrace
with the holy smell of incense bare
and all the while he droned on steadily
like a distant engine upon an incline
the birds of the night spun around him
crazy like a moth willing death to come
the hot wax stuck like glue on his fingernails
as the passion heated up and blew a blast
in the direction of mirthless unseen onlookers
witnesses to a macabre rite in the dead of night
the time for forging ties that bind was well nigh
for what better instrument to weld togetherness
than a grim kind of secrecy in the  dead wilderness