Showing posts with label Darkness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Darkness. Show all posts

Saturday, February 1, 2025

Underneath

 

Photo © Jennifer Wagner

They tell you

the desert is a liar.

 

But I say,

it’s a revealer of secrets.

 

There is no blistering

the sun can’t reveal,

 

no buried corpse

the sun won’t bleach.

 

The dark and wet

obscure things,

 

but lay your hand

on the desert at night,

 

its blue darkness

will rise up in you—

 

tremoring like cicadas

somewhere far off,

 

rumbling underneath,

black

 

to match your puddled eyes

and clinging, savage hair—

 

black, to pull the darkness

stretching out into the light.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

 


 

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Lift (For My Son)


And this, my very heart,

is the weight of water
like blood
bending the blooms,

smoke and mist graying tulips,
ash on butterflies’ wings.

My very heart! We bury
our dead selves
swollen but dry,
and in this come alive—the lift

in rain
and rain and rain again.

My very heart, see!
Instead of the weight, the gray, the ash—

the bloom,
the color,
the wings.


© 2020 Jennifer Wagner