Naked
After they rolled dice and whispered as if he had no presence,
And grain by grain, particle- by- particle
The night things stirred— the new sun like a boat of gold, the splinters
Of light rising like sap, haunch by haunch
Filling the boredom of now-it-is over, the matter of stars coming out
Like a thousand adulteries, the shouts of the earth
Diminishing and the hoarse scents overlapping—
He lay there in the dirt, completely unguarded, the long narrow bars
Of the body called root, the slivered curve
Of the spine: seed-pod bearing witness to the scene, blemished
Drag-marked beauty, the reconciled dissolving,
Rotting, the funneled lily flung backwards—
Here lying separate, abandoned; raw and rudimentary, a condemned man
Unparticular as bottom rushes and leaves,
Bare as white-water, hammer of thunder, razor of lightening.
Heart drowning following one step behind
In its riffle of blood, proof of the-nothing-exceptional or manifested.
No rumor of resurrection, or fragrant ritual
Only this shape, narrow shoulders hunched over like a vestigial claw—
Lenore Wilson lives in the wilds of Napa and is a college teacher. Her work has been in such magazines as Quarterly West, Madison Review, Trivia: Feminist Voices, Rattle, 13th Moon, and Poets Against the War.