Cita O'Brien - Things For Which They Saw (Poetry)

Things For Which They Saw

Take this. Take
all of this. And tell me how to
make meaning out of slime. Tell me how to
bless birds and touch the eye of a prairie.
Tell me how to mourn the hearts of those
who listen to north winds.
When barbarous spring peels away the flesh and
sods the bones into the
fertile dirt, the Siberian Squill invades its
indigo flush to our place of where
we make myth and meaning.
Footstep
Stomp
Push and pull
apart the entrails of uprooted grass paths. Because you see?
That’s what a pilgrimage is about. Don’t sip hot tea out of china without knowing
where its skeleton came from.
For this is not simply just a homage, it’s spring! Not
a time of beauty but an interval of softening carcasses.
Take this body.
Take this head.
Take it like slime,
and jam it into the back of our heads
and tell me not what the sheep
did to our Saint Sir Thomas Becket but
where sight lies now.