From the Spear Side
Today a bumpy veil of clouds
drifts, as though designed by a child’s
chalk-rubbing, tracing unlevel ground,
the subtle rawness of some shale-
turned-slate, flat but foliated.
How their gas absorbs the light
and fastens it to blue, brocaded
shimmer, sheen and blaze—not quite
a sun itself but its conveyance!
What’s embossed but the faults and flaws
we fixate on—one odd misstatement,
then
regrets recycled without pause:
remorse for true harm, shame for gauche
gestures, thinking we’re too grossly
marred?
That gash, capacious, opens to stars.
Deborah J. Shore has spent most of her life housebound or bedridden with sudden onset severe ME/CFS. This neuroimmune illness has made engagement with and composition of literature costly and, during long seasons, impossible. She has won poetry competitions at the Anglican Theological Review and the Alsop Review. Her most recent or forthcoming publications include THINK, Thimble Lit, Ekstasis, Reformed Journal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Christian Century, Relief Journal, and the Sejong Cultural Society.
Amethyst Review 