Portrait in Stained Glass of the Body Moving through a Field

- after "Mare Tenebrarum" (2016), Judith Schaechter


Shadows slash across an ambient field: a planetarium 
of wildflowers, their interwoven tongues harboring 

prophecies preceding your birth— their murmuring 
a wind or wave, a plow making a path for the body's 

passage, lashed to the back of a mare galloping 
toward the woods in the distance. Or the cliff's 

edge, or the sea. When you close your eyes, you 
can feel time sift its fine powder on your lashes. 

Touch one hand to your throat and feel the pulse 
slinging toward rapture. With your other hand, make 

a gesture that means I welcome all dreams; just keep 
the terrors at bay. Every fragment you graze offers 

a different fragility in form: millefiori shaken 
out of paperweights, translucent twigs, insects 

with tearable husks for wings. Thus stirred, 
the darkest sea ripples with hidden light.