Donna Pucciani

Father Damien Observes His Feet

If life is a frozen pond etched by skates
of Flemish youths built like oxen,
scarved and ruddy in fields of snow,
sniffing winter the way a hound
scents a rabbit darting into the woods,

then death is a colony of faceless souls,
a forest of scarred skin, lost fingers, claws
and stumps, its leaves a canopy of bindings
that tape a hand together, or patch a foot
for walking crutchless.

And heaven is a jungle teeming with orchids,
filling a hole where a nose once was, with stems
of clean bone and petals of immaculate flesh,
where strong hands, once mittened and stinging,
lace leather work boots and wield a hammer
to build white houses and a church on the green.

And hell is an island where lava of ash and fire
cannot scour pocked cheeks, cannot swallow
lesions inch by senseless inch or, where nostrils
merge, cannot mend the dark void of breath.

So sighs a Belgian priest in the hills of Kalaupapa
who peels off his socks, and, in an evening ritual,
soaks his feet in a scalding tub, only to discover
he cannot feel his toes.

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Donna Pucciani’s first chapbook, The Other Side of Thunder, was published in Great Britain in 2006; her book Jumping Off the Train is forthcoming from Windstorm Creatives.