DRAFT of a Poem for some Wrens.... “Pain is your friend,” they instructed us, In that physiology classroom, Where we learned that lepers lose their hands, Because the nerves are gone, and scratches Become wounds, like gaping, wide flowers, Because these sick ones feel no pain. Sick at the thought, we thrust them away, Ringing bells through the long centuries, Because perhaps it’s hard to find pain Become a gift, a source of our grace: Because it flinches and holds from harm. Or those flagellants, saving their souls, With incessant, backward, strokes of briar. Willfully! No: joyfully! Scourging, Because those feeling souls long to fly: Become angels. No sorrow. No pain, Because God so loved a bitter world… There was a nest of wrens in the briars, By my door, last week. I watched mother, Sitting the eggs, and it was grace-full, Because it seemed the gift of a God, Become wide mouths, like petals gaping, Because life needs feeding, and birds die. Nestlings don’t even know: making it Will mean flying! So the helpless dark Is a pause, then they’ll soar like angels! Because now incessant fear, hunger, Become a slow, steady rising. Sad. Because merely living seems a scourge. That night, a snake thrust into the nest, And in the bitter darkness took them. And I found empty space, carved of wrens, Because birds shape my dreams to themselves, Become empty, and heartsick, and gone. Because now they are hollows of grief. Mother-of-God: how does pain protect, Those who have only feathers and grace? Did you feel sweet pain in that straw grave Because nestlings warbled the measure? Become cries, horror, and that sad doom? Because God struck back with a message? And so wrens only give me themselves. Like the taunt of a fluttering kiss, And are gone to their dark hatchling deaths. Because now they are nothing but love Become loss. They are here, on my hands, Because grief wrings out such wrenching tears.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:17:46 +0000