Stepping Through Wounds

Painting by Antonio Puri


stepping through wounds


& how does the line
pretend to be
a road

or music hold any
sorrow or who
cleans rain

* * *

this secret
a seed of
truth

truth
a pocket
of secrets

* * *

thickly ribboned
we are matted light
& what light desires

can she follow the vine
strung out like pearls of turned
shoulders those far eyes so darkly honeyed

* * *

or nerve codes—ghosts a smoke
of starter lives—how only
joy can birth a grief

& still she dances
crooked circles thru trees
painted wagons bearing caskets

* * *

& cradles—heavy gowns of brocade
silvered nets of wedding maps
trailing bones & blossoms

or how the needle
pierces pulls &
stings to heal;

constellation of fireless stars

* * *

swimming
in stones

hell has
no fire

it presses
without

release
& her

feet
unbound

slip wet from
his curling hands

a god’s broken mast
the Sirens tongueless in sorrow:

the soul of her glass slipper: deep wounds

* * *

3 hours 5 years 4 days 1 minute
or count the syllables in Deuteronomy
the Vulgate version of “these are the things”

or fake burnt edges of a cloth lost
on an interstate
imagining a blinding a wanderer envisioned
of a bodily ascension of a Christ

(hold anything long enough
& it will fill your hand
with a terrible heat)

tap the hollows in the wall of a church
converted now to an antique shop
the ghosts squeak like mice

surely there are signs
& cosines tangents
& bad poetry

they look for the key
to the code its
skin like

glass
red as fire
an angel foot

extended to the prince
a night of constant resurrection
a single eye floating thru a lightless abyss

he judges the fall of steps
does this go up
or down

but when they lean in
to kiss as if writing of certain hearts
it is enough to tremble & say:
there are at least 2

kn’owing the n’ames of g’od or
the (comb)ination to the lock
of the universal store of kn’ow’ledge:
or lean in with your hands ready
to hold & be’held

* * *

how she runs
to nick
time

each step(h)

(o silence
of the h’our)

a crook a wave
breaking trails of springs
the distance to the depthless sea

the blood of running out

how some soles never harden
each stroke only

softening the ground
a bed of ever after
in the epiphany

of closing her

widening
eyes


Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry