Spark of the Sky Stag’s Great Heart
strung from a thought arrived through the keyhole grasping
the hand of another
I will begin with my mouth
then live with antlers remembering the light inside, always to breathe this unforgetting
and his body shaped like a crabapple tree
or a mother raised by a wolf looking back at the mirror
and trying not to break anvils on the bottles of blame
in another life: smell of moss, stream water, depressions of dark orange rocks which trap tiny fish
the consequence of silence: a field beneath opening clouds
on that morning I woke to the sound of the blue jay and used a small silver key
some day we will all be gone from this place
now that the live oak has thrown down all its caramel-colored leaves, thought lives in the ear-shaped idea of this only
Copyright © 2015 by Sarah Messer. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 29, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I wrote this poem in the middle of packing to leave a place I had lived in for fourteen years. So the poem is about coming and going, and also about the arrival of a thought or a memory. It is an attempt to remember that one day we will all be dead and gone. If I can remember, I find that I act with more kindness, love, and right action—so the poem is also a spell or a prayer to never forget this.”
—Sarah Messer
Sarah Messer
Sarah Messer is the author of Dress Made of Mice (Black Lawrence Press, 2015). She works at White Lotus Farms and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.