Blackbird Archive← v15n1, Spring 2016Poetry · Volume 15, Number 1
Novitiate
She comes into sleep like a child,
questioning. Now she is willing
to taste the rain, even bitter
in its case of starkest white.
But look at the way
her hands travel, like scythes,
between each ornament and the pure
resilience of sun—she has gone
past desire. There is no longer
a refusal of the ordinary. She moves
like a porcelain figure in her dream,
letting the air close
behind her.
She turns each quotidian moon
over in her hand. She portions
her approval strictly to what
she is given, pared
to a bone, burnt to an echo.
Sometimes she takes the wind
and makes from it a day full of fields
and distance, a house full of angels,
a single, brilliant feather.
