A Dance In Purgatory ~ Justice Rebmann

One myth-spinning man dreamed up Asphodel

as a never-ending eld of wheat,

as a landscape painting:

a swath of shivering gold, the sky hesitantly hovering overhead, dissolving from silver to smoke

and were I one of those unclaimed Greek souls,

I would mistake purgatory as my final stop

where I’d toil alongside harvesters of the past

those who gave me the brown of my eyes

the curve of my cuticles

my long fingers, made to select gently

from the earth only what she chooses to let go.

She would be leading us in a dance

the kind you learn once in a dream

and cannot repeat

following the hidden path of the hedgerows

our conversation not spoken

words found in the tread of our feet

in the turning of a cheek

the wheat shushing

its crisp song against my hips

asking me to stay, to sow

from the earth

until she chooses to let me go