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Lines

By Dan Beachy-Quick b. 1973 Dan Beachy-Quick

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).

Biography

Poet and essayist Dan Beachy-Quick was born in Chicago and raised in Colorado and upstate New York. He was educated at Hamilton College, the University of Denver, and the University of Iowa.

Beachy-Quick's poetry collections include North True South Bright (2003); Mulberry (2006), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for poetry; and This Nest, Swift Passerine (2009). He is also the author of A Whaler's Dictionary . . .

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