If I can no longer feel my fleshthough I sit uneasy in its warm charnel,how can I know your embraceso like a moth’s wingas something more real? We huddle against the cold,called out of slavery for wildernesshowling for a feast when all that remainsis the inscription the accuser crow leaveson cattle bones. In this cudgel of spring, a green firein the dry grass, a sprig of forsythia in a vasethat appeared on the mantle while we were children asleep on the couchin grandmother’s house of memory can you scry for me, prophet, and deny that blood is nothing buta fiction I would rush to trade for joy? It is in that doubt, that sweet despair,I resign my tears, slip the veil,stare hard into those broken eyesand stumble blind, red and transfiguredinto the fresh clay of your tenacious grace.