Ruins

                                                                                                                                                 Reservoir Fire 2011

Some lines selected here and there fromTraci Brimhall's OUR LADY OF THE RUINS

This is not the place your life begins or ends.

We want to ride the horse of the past backward
through time to first wounds...

Take the blackbirds from your hair and lay them in grass. If
their eggs hatch in your hands, go north.

Find the immaculate muscle which did not
burn, and take it.

the revelation of stone is slow

Say the body is a needful animal petitioning the sky
to satisfy its thirst. Say it is a haunted cabinet.

These are the ruins
I mapped onto my body so I might always be lost.

I dreamt my daughter dove
for whale bones on the abyssal plains,
surfaced from the seafloor bearing
spines, ribs, colossal skulls.

When he asks for a sacrifice, I offer
another woman's son.

A woman's body is a memory with no language.