The Answer Lives Inside – a poem by Susan Jackman

The Answer Lives Inside


I could tell you about this city, the rows of windows 
up and down the bodies of buildings, illuminated 
at night from within. All those rectangles of glass 
like the lines along the fuselage of airplanes 
that make me wonder who’s behind them. 
Who’s living the secret lives inside?

Morning sun glints off the panes like a Marian apparition. 
The feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe is 12/12, 
which, if you believe in the life of numbers, is double 
what’s needed for completion: months of a year, 
a dozen eggs, the twelve signs of the Zodiac 
with their individual architectures of behavior.

Our Lady gave Juan Diego a cloak of roses, emblazoned 
her image on the cloth so people would believe him.

How many of us need that?

My friend told me how a child asked Agnes Martin, 
“Agnes, what are your paintings about anyway?” 
The artist took a rose from the vase on the table and asked, 
“Is this flower beautiful?” 
Yes… 

Agnes hid the rose behind her back.“Is the flower still 
beautiful?” Yes spoke the child. 
“Well, that’s what I paint.” The power of beauty 
to be present even in its absence…

Making the invisible visible — pulling threads 
from the air and arranging them on canvas
or paper. The lines and rhythm of breath 
suddenly seeable.
 

Susan Jackson‘s two poetry collections, Through a Gate of Trees and In the River of Songs, were published by CavanKerry Press. All the Light in Between is a Finishing Line Press chapbook. She is currently completing a new book, Geography of the Possible. Jackson believes in the power of literature and the arts to build community as well as forge greater understanding across world borders. In addition to her writing, Jackson has a healing practice using a number of hands-on healing modalities.