Friday, July 9, 2010

in the valley of dry bones

ezekiel 37

In the name of your own strength
you excavate.
in daylight--
bravery in your breadth and depth
and density.
Revisit all the sacred sites
without a hint of reverence.
Your head, your waking heart
resists the tug to bow--
remains erect.

Plow ahead
until all is pulled
scattered and brushed off
numbered and glassed.
Separate it all, create logical patterns.
Neat descriptions of each dead artifact--
you wrote the text yourself
(full of common sense).


And by twilight
brush off hands,
wash the deep chalky clay
out from underneath fingernails-
not a damned spot left.

Yet every night in darkness
all these dry bones coalesce:
behold a shaking.

the forms you snapped apart
methodically, your mouth set
in morning's harsh light,
now reclaim their improbable shape,
the unlikely truth of things--
dancing, full of breath and life.

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