let the light enter me through my wounds
make a word in the sand
watch it fade
in a wash of tide
all the structures
that we try to create
— weak, disintegrating —
in the magnificent intelligence
of what was always already perfect
how pleased i am to love
& experience this earth
in a flesh body
that crumbles
how good it is
to be born
to live
gather wounds
become healed
to be bookended with death
& to keep going
past the sentence end
into the infinity flow
of the birth mother: life
how you cannot separate
one from the other
life-death-life
this daisy chain of existence
to which we are all
eventually laid claim
how i feel when the day is done & it is time for rest
how i feel when rest is done & it’s time for day
interested in daylight, anew
this life,
a tending of wounds
this maintenance
of pierced places
This piece is one in a series, On the Essential Maintenance of Daily Life, a poetic collaboration for National Poetry Writing Month (#NaPoWriMo) by Samantha Wallen and Michelle Puckett. To read the previous poem in the series, click here.
Michelle Puckett, MFA is a poet, doula, permaculturalist, coach and Co-Founder of Creating Freedom Movements, a social justice school for activists. All of her work aims to nourish the sacred and make it plain in every day life.
