Page 46 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

Another Letter to the Soul

Melissa Kwasny

You picked me from the litter as a brightness, rubbed me between finger and

thumb. You placed me, and the bees, who are like-spirits, came. You gave

them, through me, a place to come to. You provided me with properties,

inaudible spells, invisible arrows that point to the hurt places. Illness of my

friends: her failing liver, his failing nerves, earth-drought, flood, the poisoned

animal. I know you have been testing me, first toughening the fragile frame.

Inside, an infant cries and objects. You have set me apart like the bald eagle,

found floundering in the river and put into the feeding cage. Long enough to gain

its strength back, and then it fled. I admit I didn't know that a broken wing could

right itself. I forget about healing, though I grow more fond of birds, the poor

nieces I can afford to bring the berries to. Sun's out, you say, serving its broth of

light.

****

The watercolorists are happy. They've picked their views and are sitting, barely

moving, in long-sleeved shirts. Mystery and clarity is what we aim for as an

achievement. You speak in the variations of wind. Upper reaches of the

cottonwood, its adolescent limbs spurred on and off into a froth of soundings.

Anxiety of ground-shadows as wind passes among the leaves. It stops, and the

tiny insects descend. We experience you only in your arrivals, not departures, so

strong you tear the tent from our hands. And yet your remains are tender,

broken and soft, as if strung with beads of dew atop wet sand. Each one of us

suffers, small things and joys. All of us are aging, having watched each other

age. What are the past lives of the wind? It cycles through the channel where

the deer carcass stinks. Where dinosaur bones protrude from the ancient banks.