January 21: Old Poems, Wonder and Awe, "In the Garden"

So, I've been going through some old poems, and I came across one that I wrote quite a while ago.  It's about wonder and awe.

It's strange reading something I wrote close to 20 years ago.  It's like looking at a snapshot, trying to find myself in the picture.

Saint Marty still believes in miracles.

In the Garden

by:  Martin Achatz 

I can put my fist in the hole

in my sister’s flank, see rib

white against slick muscle.

When she sleeps, her body cries

for healthy blood and skin and scar.

I sit beside her hospital bed, listen

to her breaths, wonder if she dreams

of dog bites, sharp glass,

the thick kiss of a dead love.

The man down the hall moans

“Clara” in the dark,

a two-syllable prayer

for deep winter, pine cones,

cool fingers on his naked back.

My sister’s hand flutters on the sheet.

I touch her wrist, trace the blue veins

under the skin.  Her face smooths

like a snowdrift, and I see

the pulse leap in her temple,

nostrils black with air,

eyes vagrant beneath their lids.

Her wound has not healed for two years,

and I joke she has stigmata like Padre Pio,

beg her touch my head, bless me.

She laughs, crosses the air.

When the priest visits her, my sister says,

“I feel like someone forgot to bury me.”

He anoints her forehead, hands, and feet.

During her next dressing change,

my sister grips the rails of the bed,

bites her lip until it bruises, splits.

The nurse examines the discharge,

smells the wound for infection, then leaves.

My sister cradles her stomach, as if afraid

her heart may spill onto the floor.

Pio’s wounds smelled of violets,

the petals of his fingers raising

full-moon hosts to heaven

during mass, roses blooming

on the snow of his bandages.

He bled all day, enough to fill

a chalice to its golden lip.

For five decades, he nursed

the stigmata like fragile orchids

rooted in his body’s soil.

At night, in his cell, he stripped

his dressings, allowed his suffering

to breathe the dark air, nerve endings

sparking in his ragged skin

like fireflies in tall grass.

In the few hours he slept,

his body opened, unfurled

the deep ovule of his pain

until the floor, walls, ceiling

blossomed with his bruised fragrance.

Tonight, my sister rests.

The IV fills her, the way rain fills

a summer garden.  She holds

her side, blooms in her bed,

a fresh and open miracle.