Hymn for Naming the Difficult Times
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—for Tim Flanagan
Season of hardship?Season of light?
One flows from the other,has always been like this, willgo this way again.
Soft souls are crying.The hardest stones are crying, too—eachaccording to its own way.
So, then, sing this to the heavens,sing to the pit:
Shake us up! Root our blindness out.Our not-seeing, now is almost-nearly welded—neglect-stuck—to the tender organs trying to bust out.
Pry that stuff from the part we were born with,so it might unite with our aching hearts. [End Page 158]
Jennifer Wallace lives in western Massachusetts. Her poems, essays and photographs have appeared in artists books, exhibition catalogs, galleries, museums, anthologies and literary journals. Her sixth book, Raising the Sparks, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press in 2022.
