Like As of Fire
Sunday we lay hands
on a girl of ten hand on hand on
cornsilk hair. We sing
the secret language sung
the day the tin roof of the tower beat
on God’s floorboard
he got cramp in heaven.
Like our crying and our
fornicating so close to his bed
was so many shrill mice in a pretty
pine floor. To heal
the girl with the crippled up leg
God sends back the song
he took and down it comes
contrary in one mouth as fire
gentle on our bodies as rain.
Soft rain swells the Cumberland
and all her fields in April nuzzles
buttercups the mules won’t touch
the crowpoison the wake-robin
the bluets of the field.
Every song got a beat beneath.
Start with the whippoorwill
early meadow colors creep
into the sky. My sons made this
tobacco sled I prime with the jenny
toss the last of the sandlugs for the rest
to thrive. So hot the wasps hang on the honeysuckle
too spent to buzz a sermon.
I know my song remembers
what my fathers told their strings.
Driskill, Kentucky
Copyright Credit: Isabel Duarte-Gray, "Like As of Fire" from Even Shorn. Copyright © 2021 by Isabel Duarte-Gray. Reprinted by permission of Sarabande Books, Inc..
Source: Even Shorn (Sarabande Books, Inc., 2021)