Listen carefully.
You do not remember this, but believe me when I tell you
that
yesterday at dawn
you saw God from the riverbank.
God was stranded over the water,
a great expanse of billowing light
caught between cross-winds,
and God was calling to you for help.
God’s cry,
a song of desperate longing,
cut into the morning calm.
Your heart,
a solitary fist,
uncurled its shaking fingers.
Then your heart ballooned outward in all directions,
its edges passing beyond the very borders of your skin
and across the water.
It slipped through iron fences, enveloped everything in
sight.
It gathered up the dogs on their leashes,
the solemn runners,
the commuters, lonely and desperate in their cars.
It loved them all for their limbs and eyelashes,
their mass and mystery.
And then the edges of your heart slid into nothingness,
and God, set free, rushed over the river and into the
streets,
spilling brightness into all the crevices and cracks.
Do not scoff, I beg of you.
You must pull on your sneakers, now,
and run to the river again.
There is room in your heart for much more.
Kneel down at the river and fill it up.
Aaah! I love this! I finally finally logged in to this blog--sorry I've taken so long. But this is wonderful. I love the over-all feel.
ReplyDeleteSome thoughts:
I want to drop "that" on the second line. I think you can do without it entirely.
"solitary fist...uncurled its shaking fingers" LOVE!
I'm not sure about the runners being solemn. Maybe they're slack-faced. Maybe they, not the commuters are desperate. I feel like they're too busy to be "solemn."
And the commuters... I kind of want different descriptors for them too.
But I love the limbs and eyelashes!
"mass and mystery" I can't decide how I feel about that. It feels too vague. They're both sort of vague...maybe if one was more precise. Mass is pretty ok, it's more physical and very impersonal which would contrast nicely with something more emotional/ephemeral, but "mystery" is too vague.
"nothingness" is not my favorite. I love the overall concept, etc, (of the whole poem, and this part too) but maybe some other way of describing. It feels like over-the-edge or into-the-ether sort of idea you're going for. Not nothingness, but somehow *beyond* what is.
I want to drop the "of" in the next line. I think "I beg you" would be less clunky.
LOVE: "you must pull on your sneakers, now"
yeah, the whole end is beautiful.
The whole concept is beautiful and flows so nicely, but what's going to sharpen it up is just the right words in those parts I mentioned.
YAY!! I hope this helps/isn't too nitpicky.