Awaken, Sleepers, Rise!
And the sound of the horn
was the lakeshore waves
lapping the side of stone
and the blue-grey music
struck our arms like water, pulling
outwards like the moon's gravity –
clearing us out, not for the first time.
Will you be a mausoleum always?
Or admit the rise and fall of decay,
the necessity of it. Death is timeless
as the present moment and its goal
of uniformity yields at the sound
that divides into our separate
exhalations, the dust of years settled
in the deepest corners of the lungs,
released and called to hear, to become
shades of reflected sky and lake water
rising from the wet root of all ghosts,
rinsed in the air and utterly relieved
to step out of the grave of our own volition,
free to perceive how together we are
at last, to say out loud and loudly:
I’VE DONE WRONG AND I’M SORRY!
Let me be better this time with you!
For we have stood in the presence of all
and seen the earth cracked open, spilling
out yolk-bright and yet to be created;
the ordinary wonders of a second chance.
Katherine Meehan lives in Reading. Her poetry has appeared in Brittle Star, Ink, Sweat & Tears, and The Crank. Her short fiction has appeared in Drunken Boat, Wilderness House Literary Review, Glint Literary Journal, and others. She holds a master's in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford and is working towards her first collection.
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