Brenda Hilliman

Little Furnace

—Once more the poem woke me up, 
the dark poem. I was ready for it; 
he was sleeping, 

and across the cabin, the small furnace 
lit and re-lit itself—the flame a yellow 
"tongue" again, the metal benignly 
hard again; 

and a thousand insects outside called 
and made me nothing; 
moonlight streamed inside as if it had been . . . 

I looked around, I thought of the lower wisdom, 
spirit held by matter: 
Mary, white as a sand dollar, 

and Christ, his sticky halo tilted— 
oh, to get behind it! 
The world had been created to comprehend itself 

as matter: table, the torn 
veils of spiders . . . Even consciousness— 
missing my love— 

was matter, the metal box of a furnace. 
As the obligated flame, so burned my life . . . 

What is the meaning of this suffering I asked 
and the voice—not Christ but between us— 
said you are the meaning. 

No no, I replied, That 
is the shape, what is the meaning. 
You are the meaning, it said—