Poetry Magazine
Reading Saint John of the Cross
How many miles to the border
where all the sky there is
exists for the soul alone?
Where the only breathers
breathing are constructed
from some new electricity
and the flowers are made
indestructible, and messages
from the dead arrive like calm
white birds with a gift?
One more night of spiritual
ice and we might all become
birds, green birds frozen
on a black winter branch.
There is a drumming in the shadows
under leaves: a million eight-eyed
spiders on the march.
The buckeyes beat themselves
half to death against
some lit-from-within screen.
Source: Poetry (February 2010).
Biography
Susan Kelly-DeWitt is the author of The Fortunate Islands (Markick Press, 2008). She is also a contributing editor for Poetry Flash, a reviewer for Library Journal, and a blogger for Coal Hill Review.
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Religion, God & the Divine, Christianity
Poetic Terms Allusion, Free Verse
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