HOW ONE HEALS
(Calico Loom)
You can put a finger in a sling, an arm in a cast,
be treated form all forms of plague. Like ribald
crusaders, back from that wicked joust, things
in slings and jacketed bones matter little. You
have done your work for the Lord.
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All those Civil War guys, splattered like nickels
over the untidy field - they die and they bloat,
the stay in place, moaning and hurt, until they
expire. Nothing to be done. Prisoners have been
taken, the most rebellious of them, of course,
murdered. That twisty fellow, over there, in
the cape, why it's either Walt Whitman or some
fault-ridden parson out on a lark. You can heal
the dead too, you know, with prayer.
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Calico Loom, on the Perdasa Creek, below the rocks
at Edenburg. That's where my neighbor's forebear
died - he says. In 1863, neglected and drained. I
never believed him, and still don't, for one second.
He made that all up - claiming a Loom lineage,
somehow, by connecting himself with the person -
so far back - who happened to share a name.
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For some people, that in itself is how they heal.
The wounds are so great that they themselves
reach and try for something other than what
they are : 'prairie grass, blazing, on fire, consumed
my family's farm; my Uncle Wallace, in Chesterton,
he would have discovered the quark, but the
established cabal wouldn't let him speak. Until
they had it out first.' It's like that everywhere.
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This jacket doesn't fit. My chest is too big.
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