God Smites me and I Reel

I am a bell ashiver at the clapper’s thud

a door flung open to the swimming stars

a silver ribbon dancing in invisible wind

a footfall stamping the earth in dance

I am that place where hand and drum collide

I am the eye of the cat in which resides

An image of the allinall

dancing singing birthing bleeding

growing, groaning, dying, and whole.

I am a breath.

I am darkness cracked open to expose

the light the light the unquenchable light

inside the most charred or bleeding heart.

I am the light gushed forth from the Ark first seen.

Silenced by its golden fire, newly sacred,

I move carefully, trembling lest I spill the light

that filled me then and sings in me still

thirty years and so much darkness later.

©2013 Joanne Tenenbaum