BIO
Rachel Blum is a mother and reiki practioner living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her poetry is to be found at the web site www.rachelblumpoetry.com.
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PRAYER
Somewhere in the future is a flame.
A cup of ash and blue light or a
mirror spark of conception.
Perhaps we precede it as the soul
precedes the idea of a baby.
With a leap of faith into
that small dependent body.
With limbs like fragile stems and
the small fist a closed flower.
And foreknowledge a constellation.
With stars like bones and
petals that cry open and settle
like waves on the familiar sea.
And the larger night blooming
flower of authority with its
shadow on the walls.
And the complicated skull with
its shifting map of plates and hinges
that to the soul might resemble
a traditional prayer.
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THE NIGHT OF HER DIAGNOSIS
The night of her diagnosis
I dreamed a white spiral
like a small galaxy that
rose away from the
hospital gurney and
turned back only once.
With a face like the monk’s face.
Its jagged stones of a riverbed with
the water washing over them like
a love that crosses the
constellations as a
secret planet
To something personal like this loneliness.
Whose magnet is strongest at twilight.
As if an astronaut’s life had
been mine and really I
was torn from the ship and
floating among stars with
home a distant blue glass.
Untitled
In the same year that
time came to our house
the mapmaker returned
to my dreams and
If I called him it
was in a dark language
of animal faces.
Solitary before
Bridges made of
the 4 a.m. rain.
Or in temporary
pairs while light
Falls on hollow trees.
We spoke once and I
showed you this despair.
Beneath the surface
Fish turned gold in
black water and
swam through
folded paper.
*****
