harbor (the conversion)

If this bowl is always empty

If it breathes if it’s lung

If a horse can rise from the ashes


Saul was a sailor on the boat to Damascus

He did not know what he was

Paul turned to a voice it rose up from the waves

It chained his boat to the darkness


A man finds ash & he makes it a man

A horse finds ash in a horse

It lifts us it holds us it breaks us again

Scatter him into the harbor

Copyright © 2013 by Nick Flynn. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on May 1, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.