POEM
Lines
The lightning struck him and left a scar.
The wind stopped blowing and the wheat stood up.
Self-tensed self, who is this I that says I ?
I had a scar in the shape of lightning
That split in half when I opened my mouth.
The sun just a circle of heat in the sky
Throwing absence in the shape of clouds
Down on the field. Another life placed
In the middle of the life I called my own.
A lesser god commanded the front: return.
A little god knocked about in the germ.
The third person put me outside my own sphere.
A small god chanting lightning in the synapse.
Wind blows the wheat down. He calls it prayer.
Source: Poetry (October 2007).
This poem originally appeared in the October 2007 issue of Poetry.
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Poet and essayist Dan Beachy-Quick was born in Chicago and raised in Colorado and upstate . . . MORE »
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