Double Opening, The

I

Sometimes in spring, I want to suck

the sight of plum blossoms

deep inside my lungs,

as if I could convert the pale petals

into azure air-or mold and roll

the words of a poem like bread

or butter balls in the palm of my hand,

touching my tongue to the glow

of their honey-rimmed sound,

aching to eat sheer beauty.

Imagine how Eve must have felt

her first springtime in Paradise.

Perhaps it was a pear,

not an apple, that she took

not for pride or gluttony

but to assuage the bright agony

she felt as she saw how lush

and lovely it looked, hanging

in its singular simplicity,

sweet as a golden teardrop.

Maybe she was the first poet

to feel our awful plight

to have a human soul

that hungers, but lacks

a double opening.

II

Simone Weil once said, "Our soul

is like two birds sitting in a tree

one eats the fruit,

the other beholds its beauty,

but neither can do both at the same time."

Only in Heaven, can we eat

what ravishes us.

I see you, poor Simone, so lonely

a starved sparrow perched

on the tip of your tree, hoping

to reverse the work of Eve.

How you sing with such stringent urgency.

You open wide your beak. You keep looking, looking

deep into the sky's pure ocean, thirsting

for its vast blue lake, singing

as if song was food enough

to fill your frail body

until finally you die, famished

for the Feast of Heaven.

PAMELA LEE CRANSTON*

* Pamela Lee Cranston is a hospice chaplain and a regular contributor of verse to this journal. She has also published in The Journal of Christianity and Literature, The Adirondack Review, and The Journal of Pastoral Care.

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Winter 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved