by Robert Bensen
Sara Bates, “Honoring Circle” (sculpture)
1
Before a shop built downtown sealed over a spring and a little creek,
excavation turned up the bones of a man, his pipe and some shards
of clay
that came from this embankment above the Susquehanna—
clay that made the brick that made the shop that hides the creek
that flows through pipe that’s made with clay that made the pipe they dug
beside the man they found not long ago, long after he had turned
to clay.
2
If spirit lives in everything and everything in spirit
then the young woman with a virus raging in the head
who has fallen asleep beside Sarah's “Honoring Circle” while the
rest write
may have dreamed herself one day as pleasant as this
beside a pretty little creek above a bluff and drank from its
talkative source
in the warmth of a complicated sun, an agitated sun
flaring with seeds and pods and leaves and shells and petals,
a composed sun from whose center the crossed roads carry
what they always carry down their seven shining paths
until the red sun of evening stripes her face
and she flutters awake to find herself alone
with this work, this disk of gifts on the floor, walk about
and wonder what on earth she saw in it, and what she sees.
© Robert Bensen. All rights.
Reserved.
