Dive Down – a poem by Marjorie Maddox with Art by Karen Elias

Dive Down


	“. . . it is a bird that likes books and even 
	brings them in its beak to saints if the saints 
	have dropped their holy books in water and 
	they need retrieving. . .”
		   -Ali Smith in Companion Piece


How far down would you go
for wisdom, words wet but still 
clinging to page, to priest, 
to Author of All descending 
to the watery depths? 
Three days: not flames 
but the cool, dark grave 
of suffocation, lungs filling up 
with river, ocean, all the seas 
of imagination, where fear 
keeps ebbing each side of shore, 
up and over the organs, the teeth,
the tongue, every puddle of breath. 
Gulp even that. The jot 
and tittle of inhale/
exhale, the prayer 
of pulp and paper, 
savior script, the sunlit 
single stroke that rises to letter, 
then letters, word and Word, 
ascending, breaking the surface 
of world with one quick gasp of awe, 
one drenched syllable of rescued hallelujah.



-after the composite photograph Prayer of Pulp and Paper by Karen Elias

English and creative writing professor at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 14 collections of poetry—most recently Begin with a Question(Paraclete, International Book + Illumination Book Award winner and CMA Award, 3rd) and the ekphrastic collections Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (with Karen Elias) and In the Museum of Her Daughter’s Mind, a collaboration with her artist daughter (www.hafer.work). She has poems included in the anthology Christian Poetry in America since 1940 . In addition, she has published the story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite) and 4 children’s and YA books. She has poems included in the anthology Christian Poetry in America since 1940 (Paraclete Press), edited by Michael Mattix and Sally Thomas, and in Taking Root in the Heart, edited by Jill Baumgaertner. Please see www.marjoriemaddox.com