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The Season
The Season
to comfort all who mourn. (Isaiah 61:2) Spellbound; in the place between poetry and prose. Like a cowgirl riding great imaginary plains, I'm back in the straddle again. Betwixt humping loaves of hills. Between flannel sheets that make it hard to turn, that steady me; and your fingers tucking sadness back under my sternum. More flapdoodle on the radio, guy ranting about deadbeats in the 60s who discovered poverty could be profitable. Today in History, women got the vote in Wyoming and the Pope proclaimed the dogma of Immaculate Conception. Now, I know which came first; but I'm telling you that sequence is senseless. Oh come, they come, all the faithful, every year watching the night sky for the wink of redemption, for the tiny tot savior who will change everything. Not for the angry man or the wild one wandering shoeless, eating insects. What we want is just a few more minutes of light, a tilt just so toward center. Dawn hoar. The hunter warming over coffee; the butcher dressing venison. The buck's head, bounced free from the pickup bed, in the culvert by our mailbox, antler buds attentive, eyes unnerved. The form that draws me takes as its basic unit the sentence. Think about it; about the types. Declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, and the potent imperative--brief, demanding, cool. Sit. Bulk, squat upon a page. I take it to heart. We who practice forms measure value in single words, like coins. The resonant clink as they spill, their metallic gleam, the story franked upon each face. Accents that change with climate. Inflected, inflicted. Fashion, fascia, Position determining which lilts, which grates. Mourn the passing of lyric I, her stillborn mouth and barked fingertips. Like a novice eager to suffer, to learn, drawn to the disciplines. Aflame at the stake, splayed and shrieking praise-song to ancient roots. Sweet savor exhaled; then hush. Betrayal and division, the rungs of life both high and low on a great chain of being. The Cabinet of Curios, specimen jars and dainty drawers, narrow slots for gummed labels, an exquisite box.
How to sustain a voice; and why, when the chance is rare. Fleeting.
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