Couplets of Bone and Skin

I Wrote a Poem in a Café Last Week

I read a lot of poetry.
I just don’t write much of it.

I am an outside observer.
I am a sideline fan.
I admire at a distance.

Sometimes the heart shakes the ribcage so hard couplets bleed out onto paper before I get a chance to make them pretty.

So here’s one of those messy little vibrations.
Soul stained pages.

I am no master
but I want to be honest.

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I don’t write much poetry
     these days 
Maybe I lost the language or the knack
     for the accent. 
It was never my Mother Tongue. 

Or maybe the verse I want to write
          can’t be bound
          by ink or page,
Maybe it needs flesh and blood —
          couplets of
               bone and skin. 

My cadence 
     is jagged. 
My rhythm 
     is naked. 

Less iambic and
more argolic —
     the lyrical metric of a kiss, and 
     the wild breath of spruce;
The epic meter
     of sex 
          and song, and
     of the silver silence of prayer. 

Maybe I write by the 
          hours and days,
     my body scaring the
          loose-leaf
          papers of time. 

The world turns, turns, turns…
     and I breathe it in, 
     and I consume it.

My heart, 
     a metronome. 
My lungs, 
     a soft melody. 
My body —
                        the hymn.

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Every Day Saints is a torchlight searching for the quiet miracles, the beautifully human stories and ideas that exist all around us. And it is a place to dialogue, not Holy Ground, but still a place of gathering.

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