There must be a way to listen

By Laurie Klein

---

like a small body of water,
reflective face, upturned:
an entity of acceptance.

Water embraces the sunken. The near-dying
as well as the thriving stir, like plants
practicing grace as they lean on the current.

Let me be a haven, where shared sediments
settle. Where buoyancy reasserts itself.
Where you will beckon the weathered vessel,
and I will coax the reluctant toe.
We’ll soften the chipped margins of shells.
Castoffs. The chronically stony.

Encompassed, the survivor rises
the way a trout breaks from silence, to surface,
old hooks and lines ingrown, jaw half-trussed--
​
wounds revealed, by one seeking a witness.
What was it the risen one said? Hark.
Flow and do likewise.

---

Laurie Klein is the author of Where the Sky Opens and Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh. A grateful recipient of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, she lives in the Pacific Northwest and blogs, monthly, at lauriekleinscribe.com. 

Laurie's other work on Foreshadow:
Private, as the Small of a Back (Poetry, October 2023)
Predawn (Poetry, October 2023)
Uphill (Poetry, October 2023)