Prism
- Prism
after Arvo Pärt
It requires a rocking, slow, of the right hand. Light rain, one side of the glass, flame, the other.
Bow pulled across slowly, like night falling, a long night in which you do not think. You do not think of loss.
Pines sway. You are far from everything, from everyone. Lightness, heaviness, they become the same.
Lift the air in your two hands. Hold it awhile. Notice how your fingers cool at the tips, how the palms
want to keep rising. There is a lake outside, of course. Frozen enough to walk on.
And a path through the pines. You know it’s there. There is no need to go there. [End Page 601]
Susan Ludvigson’s most recent collection is Escaping the House of Certainty. Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah, and she has held Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Fulbright, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. She paints as well as writes in the company of fiction writer Scott Ely, her husband, and four supportive dogs.
