Wounded by Light
If I say to you the cage of my heart is
broken and bleeding birds into the sky,
a moth is dazzled by the blinding sky,
an airplane tears the silence of the sky,
you may empty my words like pebbles
from your shoes and walk away.
Squint at the horizon through a scratched window—
there are moments to exchange for days, for years.
Close your eyes and open doors
and falling in the rain will come my name.
If someone asks you if you have seen
the something she lost, you could say
you could make a wish through the window.
There are instruments and experiments
and many words for many things—
a moth dusting her wings on a windowpane,
a bird on a wire, a man on a telephone
listening for a voice to speak his name.
There is a stepping aside, a turning around,
a name withheld like a caged bird.
At the end of the day the sun is in my boots
and I walk across a dismal craving.
The sky is a seamless puzzle I cannot solve
and it hurts my eyes to try to.
In mirrors made of windows your image grieves.
You drop your name like a stone,
a sparrow falling, a moth wounded by light.
Note to Betty: note the boots reference.
Very special boots, indeed.
I couldn’t get past the first couple of lines without sobbing.
There there, Churchill. There there….
Sorry. Brittle and silly, even if it was a parody.
Ouch.
I was just thinking I should have included it in the book.
Looks like Churchill emptied your words like pebbles
from her shoes and walked away.
Was this a parody? I totally missed that. I thought it was about love and suffering and lonliness.
I’m suprised it’s a reject….
Thanks Mel. No, it’s not a parody, at least not intentionally. I can’t remember why I didn’t include it in the book. Maybe I thought it veered too close to the ultimate lovelorn cliche of the “broken heart”.
Maybe Churchill was calling her previous comment a parody. It’s hard to say.
Jonathan
A lot of flying things in this one. Lots of sky. Seems to be about the inability to get the flock out of Dodge with all the flying and not flying going on.
Somedays you feel like you’re in line on the runway but you’re never going to take off.
You’re onto something. It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a plane to cry — to misquote Dylan.
This is a test comment, please disregard its presence.
Yes’m.
Another example of being ‘wounded by light’: St Francis (that’s ‘Holy Father Francis’ to Dominicans) receiving the stigmata.
Thanks Angelico.
At the end of the day the sun is in my boots
and I walk across a dismal craving.
Favorite part!
I will fifteenth the notion that this should have been in HoW’s. But of course, as Stephen Vincent Benet quipped, a writer ought not to expend all his ammo at once.
I especially like this one because it presents as a thematic sestina of sorts. (Was that your intention?) The repetition of images/themes, work their way through like the flocked shadows of an interior conversation; and the refusal to resolve at the end tempers the uplift and prevents it from going all mawkish in the corners of the mouth.
The images themselves are an exquisite tour de force!
JOB
Thanks Job.