Giving Up The Ghost
Lying on a bed of alleluias
Sick with cords of shivers
Lead-shot with weariness
The warm breath of Jesus whispers,
"Give up the ghost."
As if there was a choice!
Gather it up, reap it from your life
Troll the outreaches of the body
Gulping and sliding through corridors
of sinews
Valves, tubes and mouldy cavities
Putty corralled in the throat
The larynx slammed behind it.
"Cough it into my hand",
An atrocious hand - a red colander
Of raw sinews, splintered bones
Blood-pain circled with lacy flesh.
The ghost slides out and Jesus
Moulds the spirit around the hole
Plugs it safe to hold the soul
From underneath the heart.
It flows warmly into its loving
receptacle.
The heart a cold, silent stone.
Gone now soul in holy hessian bag
Woven with prayers, good
intentions, kindness.
Holed with jealousy, unkindness, doubt
Darned with belief and trust.
Taken safely into the void and origins
anew.
© Patricia Turner June 2010
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