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  • Prayers for Passage
  • Susan Settlemyre Williams (bio)

1. The Road

They haunt the roadside. (Keep me.)High beams tunneling the clotted trees . . .(Keep me from killing.)

Any vertical could be a deer—clumpof dead grasses, mailbox, post; any gleam—glass or metal—light-blind eyes. Tensing

of haunch, imagined, tenses thigh and calf,shifts my foot from gas to brake.Need makes them mad in winter—the rut,

their other hungers. Yesterdayaround my birdfeeder, eight doesin silence sifted the snow for hulls

of sunflower seed, then drifted downhill—procession of ghosts—as the buckstepped out to take his turn. I stood

at the window, close enoughto count his tines. I didn't rouse the dog.Tonight anything could trigger

the leap, the panic rush,send them all sightless into my path.I've seen the hooves tapping

across the windshield, those dulledand dying eyes on the verge.(Keep me, keep them, keep all of us tonight.) [End Page 121]

2. The Temple

And later, falling asleep, I hate the deer,how archaic they are, all terror

and need to bolt, when they can't outrunthe thousand horses galloping my car.

And then in the stippled twilightof nightmare, the alley of trees becomes stone,

an avenue of roofless giant pillars,their bud-shaped capitals almost out of sight.

The deer, or something like them—horned—are cut onto the ruined walls of what must be

a temple. It would be like Luxor or Kom Omboif not so empty, no polyglot of travelers

and guides. Maybe, as I will in dreams, I've takena side path and lost my thread. The Altar

to Healing is on the left, and I'm alone in shadowon the right, the crocodile-god's sanctum.

(An echo of Amr's voice: They made godsof what they loved and what they feared.)

My deer-gods are shadowing me now,and I'm casting cold beams of light into

their mirror-eyes, and they and I, in our ownways, are praying for deliverance, or day. [End Page 122]

3. The Tomb

The word is not die. It is continue life.After the parenthetical pausefor eviscerating, preserving, packing organs

into the creature-headed jars (except the heart,which is sewn back in placeafter salting; except the brain, extracted

through the nose and tossedto vultures). After pause for natronto do its work, for bandaging.

Pause like the Sun'sjourney through night.

Let the jackal-priest open the mouthso the body, cured, awakened, can continuethrough the tunneling dark,

through assaults of demons— man-beasts,three-headed serpents with claws and wings—let it call them each by name

so it can pass free. Let it continue in companywith its god-guide, to be brought beforethe court of gods: judge, jackal-bailiff,

the ibis-headed court reporter, for recitationof all the wrongs not committed (I did not,I did not, I never)—before the Lady Justice

who weighs her feather against its mortal heart,her scales poised above the Devourerwhose crocodile jaws will scarf the lying soul. [End Page 123]

But let this heart prevail, let thislife continue, let its deployment of clayservants fish and plow for it eternally.

Let it embark in the golden boatwith the ever-birthing Sun.

4. The Garden

Margaret, sifting your way silently into soilthrough dust of your three cats, working down,

worked deep by frosts and a sullen throb of rain,there's nothing left of you to stride, purposeful,

into the dark, no mouth awakened and opento name your demons, no heart measured in the pan,

no self to testify to your clean hands—only powder, your long legs and elegant

fingers. This dirt's not meant for mummies,and after all, you didn't seek an afterlife,

only an honest end, your body sloughingits poisons and curling into sleep and peace.

Still, I wish you continuing, something morethan the fed fat roots of next year's sun-drunk flowers. [End Page 124]

Susan Settlemyre Williams

Susan Settlemyre Williams lives in Richmond, Virginia, and...

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