Poetry Porch: Forgiveness


 

Birthday of a Courier 
by Esther Cameron 

The high-relief of something in the mind
almost forgotten, remembered not by name
but rising, shedding water from bright flanks:

follow the trails of water to their source,
enter the source, and speak. Let your eyes
protrude from tree-trunks, your hands
appear over intersections, in the air.

Your companion is a thought that keeps pace
with you, dodging among the mirrors of the air,
surfacing in eyes, in eyes, ringing
voice after voice like a set of untried chimes.

Your credentials are the constellation and the leaf,
the tokens under the tongues of the unborn,
and you are shod in thankfulness of the earth.



Copyright © 1981 by Esther Cameron. 
This poem first appeared in Seven Gates, Jerusalem.

 
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