Acuity

Everything reduces to one country, one town, one night
in a rain that falls on the grass like a halo of quills.

Think of it: how blades of grass, their green, their lush
underlining are no match for a bed like a halo of quills.

Confess through the shadowed grille of your deepest heart:
there are wounds not yet healed of their halo of quills.

In gold-leafed scrolls and triptychs, trace with your finger
the figures of saints and martyrs with their halo of quills.

Just before I drop off to sleep, a tremor shakes my frame—
as if my leg or hand brushed against a halo of quills.

Enter my dreams like rain, like the tipped echo
of an echo deflecting from points in a halo of quills.

In response to Via Negativa: In hepatica time.