“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way . . . To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, —all in one.”
John Ruskin
Here we have the taste of the moon; a chickadee with a bullet in its wing lain to rest on flowers, flowers that will try to breathe the wild world into your lungs; here we have thirst like a freshly burnt home; corn dogs warm from the deep fat fryer; an image of your father that you’ve never seen before; here we have Jesus and leopards lying in parks; a dead woman’s braid before her burial, her bobby pins that you will weave onto your daughter’s glowing head; here we have a garnished zither; a knife that you’ll grip tight, tighter; here is a canyon, your lover is on the other side, look down, look up, look down again; here is a cave’s mouth; here is a brown hand that you slip dollars into; a bandaid to patch up the world.
Here are pearls from the bottom, to make the world a little more bearable, a little more delicious, a little more aurora borealis.
January 2018
-Meg McManama
