"two fingers and a promise"

[I’m extremely pleased to add a new poet to the wonderful list of contributors here on Robert Frost’s Banjo. Mairi Graham-Shaw is a writer with a deeply poetic sensibility & a fearless inventiveness. Please join me in welcoming her!]

two fingers and a promise


i cannot tell you
how we speak
without words
and as a poet
should deny the possibility

it came from her
like water from a rock

blessed are you, child
a maker of peace

she spoke without quotation marks

the metaphor she used was sexual
like peace could be some sticky secretion
staining my sheets
like i could coax it out
with two fingers and a promise

the light swooned around her
and clung to her
like she'd pulled down the sulky luminescence
of an almost rainy day
for her gown

blessed are you
whose blood spills out on the ground

the angels were so high above
as to be irrelevant
holding up the molding of the sky
grey winged as clouds

but their falling feathers burned
still hot to touch when they fell
ashy, on my shoulders

Mairi Graham-Shaw
© 2012