#basilwritespoetry

I have always thought my fingers to be hallowed,

divine channels between my thoughts and the page,

instruments to sanctify my emotions and make them something other, something pure.

The problem with thinking myself holy is that when

the flesh (distanced, even now) fails,

I am the only God to blame.

There are days when I cannot write,

when I hope my aching joints at least got their thirty silver,

and I drown in the lustral water of my thoughts.

If this is a baptism by fire,

tell me, what sin I am atoning for?

I took a shop class once,

where we worked wood,

and I fell in love with pine.

It seemed such a delicate thing,

lightly perfumed with the ghost of sap,

delicate enough that I thought I might be able to bend it with my hands.

I thought it beautiful,

the subtle variegations

like silk, like hair, like something still alive.

You have taken this from me,

though I know you did not mean to,

for you could not try to steal what you did not know.

I once told you about caraway seeds,

and how the Victorians used them in funeral biscuits,

as I knead the dough, I wonder if you knew then.

I wonder if you know how much I think of you,

how I cannot go where I once went without being robbed of breath,

how I have molted into something sadder, less splendid, than I was before.

But of course you don't know. 

You have left me behind,

somewhere I cannot follow, for I am no Orpheus, to drag you back to me with honeyed words.