August 13, 2007

For Rachel, Just before Speech

We are the body moving toward demise;
we are the soul, remnant of another life.

And always, rain tapping on a zinc roof
is the sound of fingers thrumming flesh.

Always, I return
to the things of this world, tethered.

You, who have come to me
from something, somewhere, I cannot name;

you who have a voice that does not speak
any language I know, yet unfurls bright wings,

alighting in each corner of this house;
you who are mine and not mine,

tell me the answers
while there is time.

—Shara McCallum
____
previously published in Image: a Journal of the Arts & Religion
& then reprinted in Evensong: Contemporary Poems on Spirituality

Posted by dwaber at 12:12 PM