Lazarus Explains

Bruce McRae

I was above and below myself,
in the same way a downpour graces a desert.
I saw with my eyes closed the unseen things.
The wind ran through me
and I was a flower sorrowed with sunlight.
Great were the many contradictions.
Dark it was, where terror wandered,
a night containing all other nights.
Until the hand had cured my fever.
Until I rose in the bed of the profane cubit,
sunlight like honey over my eyes.
Like the sweetened breaths of mothers’ kisses.