The Poem You Hang on Your Wall Like a Painting Because It Does Something Different Each Time the Light

I thought that once, near the end,
a radiance would rise again from the freckling
at her throat, her collarbones, a redtail
spiraling lazily up from the canyon floor
on a late-day thermal. That would be her
soul slipping its cage on an exhalation
making its break from the fussy care, fluttering
hands, the carted-in electronics. I can see her,

her hair in curlers, painting her finger
and toenails their fire-engine, summertime
red, with the tip of her tongue between
her teeth, and clouds of cotton wedged
between each toe, a line of squalls, a stay
against the urge to falsely discriminate body

from soul, as if one could carry on
without the other. It was not what we
believed then, not what we repeated in
our Credos each Sunday. But soon enough,
we let our own religion overrun the yard;
then, blasphemy, our own God too, ours always
fabulous and full of fun, the antithesis of
his righteous cousin, the one with the anger-
control issues, the real estate, the lightning bolts,
the constipation, the long, long books of rules.

Copyright © 2008 Timothy Kelly All rights reserved
from Floating Bridge Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission