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.
“’Harbor (The Conversion)’ is a collaboration with Mischa Richter, a friend who I've been collaborating with for the past few years, often by writing poems in response to his photographs and films of Provincetown, which is his home and my adopted home (or one of them)—Mischa sent me his photograph, which is a still of a short film he made of a local pal (Paul Tasha) riding one of his horses in the bay, while leading another horse beside them. I combined this image with Carravagio's great painting ‘Saul's Conversion on the Road to Damascus’, which always reminds me of Paul.”
Nick Flynn
Nick Flynn
Born in 1960, Nick Flynn is the author of the poetry collections My Feelings (Graywolf Press, 2015), The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands (Graywolf Press, 2011), Blind Huber (Graywolf Press, 2002), and Some Ether (Graywolf Press, 2000), which was the recipient of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award.