Elements of Healing

Here, they will place a shock of fire on your heart
so your body will remember its living rhythm again,
and how your heart can be warm, when it loves.
 
They will place exotic liquid chemicals
or someone else's blood in needles and syringes,
pierce your own routes of water, (those blue conduits
roaring with tides and memories, moods of the moon)
and they will sail you to safe shore.
 
They will catch the air for you, in tubes and soft boxes
transparent as flayed angel’s skin
and they will breathe for you, slowly, seriously
kiss you back into life.
 
On your tongue they will place willow and rosy periwinkle
chalks and six kinds of sugar, wafered like bread,
your body will respond, flesh to flesh, turn away from hurt
to blossom and make new, delicious fruit.
 
They will allow the cool magic of ether to move you
from days crowded with clawed fears
into a healing night peaceful as old black winter velvet.
Then your spirit will grow strong and lovely as amaryllis
that needed a spell of cold darkness before it bloomed like a star.
 

Rose Flint

in collection A Prism for the Sun, 2015, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-906856-54-0