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.