From “The Wife, Ezekiel & God”
By Petra White
So I spake unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded.
— Ezekiel 24:18
She is approaching him, God, he sees her
in his eye-edge, a tiny gold speck
getting bigger, scintillating. Her beauty
lashes him with its sword —
but she has heard all this before.
She approaches him, the one who killed her,
and she reeks of life.
He waits for her to dissolve in him, but her grit
encircles his teeth.
He waits for her to become
what he has made her, an angel, passionate
and cold as the dawn,
quietly encased in power,
churning out neutral love and fastened to eternity,
backwards and forwards all the days.
But the world is tangled in her hair.
She is getting closer
and her gold beauty is greening, her face is turning
furious, fury-like, her death
opens around him
and he feels a human fear.
He cannot match her, she has the reins
of creation in her slim white paws, he feels the world
creeping away from him. He makes
to shove her from heaven, let her slip and slumber through the world.
But he cannot grip her.
She gleams through him like heaven through a needle.
the stroll
God takes Ezekiel for many walks.
He talks about all the things he will do to the people,
this and this and this, and then
they will know who I am.
One day they chance upon a valley of bones
splintering and whitening in the sun.
Shall these bones live? These
bones? Oh Lord. God flings
sinew on the bones, liver, spleen, gristle.
The bodies rise.
Rise without breath, wet clay
glistens in the sun.
He gives breath, as if an afterthought.
Ezekiel tries to see in their eyes, one at a time.
The men not moving but lunging forward like warriors,
eyes ice cold mud seen through mist,
waiting for their souls to snap back in.
They are bruised with an ache
made not by the world.
Their forgotten stories rift their faces,
their deaths now a hole they can walk through.
Home a space that closed after them, rinsed of
the mourning that ran its course.
They glimmer in new reality, still speechless,
as if they were really the miracle ...
But already God has taken Ezekiel by the elbow.