This is what you are. What you’ve come to.
The Little Book of Hand Shadows
–Deborah Digges from Rough Music
You who began inside me,
see a tortoise, a stork, a wolf come out of my hand.
Stand behind me, your shadow eclipsing
my shadow.
Make the cock crow by opening and closing two fingers.
We can be anyone now.
We can be spirit, ships homing, ten brothers in heaven.
Can you feel the sweet wind of their wing beats?
Can you smell the damp forest
as the walls fill up?
The breathe with things.
Crook your right forefinger which forms a paw.
Remember a crab moves a little sideways.
Pick me up like you used to and whirl me around.
Mother Hubbard's dog's begging.
Your Dapple Grey appears to be running.
Our shadows spill shadows.
They pool, they molt.
They grow out of the dark, they grow
out of themselves.
They crowd the ark, they crowd the world with their finger-ears
and thorny toes and their broken beaks
and knuckled hearts,
their broken beaks and knuckled hearts.
My Life's Calling
-Deborah Digges
My life's calling, setting fires.
Here in a hearth so huge
I can stand inside and shove
the wood around with my
bare hands while church bells
deal the hours down through
the chimney. No more
woodcutter, creel for the fire
or architect, the five staves
pitched like rifles over stone.
But to be mistro-elemental.
The flute of clay playing
my breath that riles the flames,
the fire risen to such dreaming
sung once from landlords' attics.
Sung once the broken lyres,
seasoned and green.
Even the few things I might save,
my mother's letters,
locks of my children's hair
here handed over like the keys
to a foreclosure, my robes
remanded, and furniture
dragged out into the yard,
my bedsheets hoisted up the pine,
whereby the house sets sail.
And I am standing on a cliff
above the sea, a paper light,
a lantern. No longer mine
to count the wrecks.
Who rode the ships in ringing,
marrying rock the waters
storm to break the door,
looked through the fire, beheld
a clearing there. This is what
you are. What you've come to.