Just before the cock crows,
the fading echo of my blasted words
obscures the other sound I don’t yet hear,
the sound of cloth tearing,
or roots coming up out of the ground,
when I pulled the weave of my heart
from yours.
I packed up my eyes and left.
With a dull knife of muteness
I cut my pain from yours
and discarded the rest.
The threads make no sound,
nerves squirming on the ground,
reaching like so many baby’s arms
into empty air.
As the cock crows, the jagged sound
covers the silence of you
carrying the wound that is secretly mine,
healing what I can’t yet see,
forgiving what I will eventually know,
walking toward the grave I needn’t fear.
And then, after, in the startled stillness
pounding in my head,
that great vast echoing hall of silence,
I barely hear, though still it resounds in me,
the quiet of stitching, tiny and steady.
I haven’t cut the thread after all, have I?
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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