Acuity

Everything reduces to one country, one town, one night
in a rain that falls on the grass like a halo of quills.

Think of it: how blades of grass, their green, their lush
underlining are no match for a bed like a halo of quills.

Confess through the shadowed grille of your deepest heart:
there are wounds not yet healed of their halo of quills.

In gold-leafed scrolls and triptychs, trace with your finger
the figures of saints and martyrs with their halo of quills.

Just before I drop off to sleep, a tremor shakes my frame—
as if my leg or hand brushed against a halo of quills.

Enter my dreams like rain, like the tipped echo
of an echo deflecting from points in a halo of quills.

 

In response to Via Negativa: In hepatica time.

3 Replies to “Acuity”

  1. Glad you made such good use of that phrase. Took me forever to arrive at it—the weirdness of sleeping in such a seemingly vulnerable place, surrounded by one’s own barbed threats! OK, maybe it’s not so weird after all.

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