And then one morning
we wake up dead, or near dead.
The flesh still hangs
on the sticks of our bones,
and our limbs still move,
but. (But what? We are
alive, clearly.
Can leap. Can sit. Can
weep and laugh and
ungrasp, grasp.
But. Where is
the woman that
used to be here?
And where the husk of man?)
There are wings
in the sky,
and we are the sky.
There is stone fruit
on the trees and we are the blooms that were
and the deepening roots and the dead leaves
that shift still across the desert’s gray clay.
And we are the ripening fruit.
And we wake up and tell ourselves,
a miracle will happen.
No, we rethink, a miracle happened.
Yes, says a voice
that is ours and not ours,
a miracle now is happening.
The title certainly poses a challenge for the reader, which I kinda like — prompting me to see if I do actually understand the poem. I think I do, then I’m not sure.
Here’s what appeals to me: That internal parenthetical segue after the first few lines forces me to see the speaker in another consciousness, be it life or death, whatever, at least an alternative internal awareness. It says (to me) I’m not dead but I’m altered. Though as the poem goes on a see how your awareness is larger than skin and bones, which I like too.
Perhaps the miracle is of this awareness. I don;t know, but that’s the way I go.
I do so love that idea of “waking up dead” in the morning:>) Such a great opening.