Trauma center

Luci Shaw

It was never meant
to burst from the body
so fiercely, to pour
unchanneled from
the five wounds
and the unbandaged brow,
drowning the dark wood,
staining the stones
and the dust below,
clotting in the air
dark with God’s absence.

It was created for
a closed system –
the unbroken rhythms
of human blood
binding the body
of God, circulating
hot, brilliant,
saline, without
interruption
between heart, lungs,
and all cells.

But because he
was once emptied,
I am each day refilled;
my spirit-arteries
pulse with the vital red
of love; poured out,
it is his life that now
pumps through
my own heart’s core.
He bled, and died, and I
have been transfused.