POETRY
Surrender
God, hold this breathing body
you resurrected with the morning star,
settle into my shoulder, unclench my neck
while my head breaks like glass.
The same anchor of neurons
that deplete and diminish also
propel my lungs, my arteries
pulsing like mountain streams,
sinews linked and vital
in a brilliant mystery.
What did Jesus do in agony of body
but acquiesce like a guileless lamb,
forgive the thieves, abandon the world,
arise again with the morning star.
Hiraeth
Welsh: longing for a time that can never be recreated.
Sundays were quiet. I could hear God
and God didn’t mind that I stole lilacs
and daffodils to give to my mom and
grandma on the way home from school.
I didn’t know the backyard wasn’t a
vast forest or why dad scoured the yard
for tiny toads before cutting the grass
with his hand mower. March was the
windy month for kite flying, and cicadas
screamed when it was time to go back to school.
We burned the yellow beech leaves in ditches
and filled our lungs with memories. It snowed
all winter and every day after school we’d pull
our sleds down to the pump-house hill, trudging
back in the twilight covered in crusts of ice to do
our homework at the kitchen table before dinner.
No one believes that God used to speak to me.
Sundays were quiet. Everything was special.
Diane Vogel Ferri’s full-length poetry book is Everything is Rising. Her latest novel is No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling. Her essays have been published in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Scene Magazine, and Yellow Arrow Journal, among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), and The Desire Path (novel). Her poem, “For You,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net prize.
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Image: The Resurrection of Christ, Paolo Veronese, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Heart of Flesh Literary Journal 
