Pentecost

Pentecost

Laurie Klein

Outside my soul’s upper room, 
no wind stirs. No one gathers 
kindling left in the rain. I leave 
it alone. Left to molder, sodden,
poor little sticks faith, 
will nothing ignite you? 
Fine. I will fix my mind

elsewhere, picture the solitary
convergence point
in all the earth where 
four systems of weather 
clash: land of the Dead 
Sea, in the stony heart
of Israel, the beloved 
dust where the Messiah left 
his peace, with his friends.

Say the soul has four walls,
no hearth, no window or door. O look, a shell
kept on a shelf still carries breath to the ear
from another time. A hint of brine. Bodily 
salt, so crucial to thought, plays 
a role, helping the brain to fire, aligning
each sound with its patient name: tornado
or breeze, simoom, snow-shifting
chinook. O to have knelt

beside those awaiting the promised
gift from on high, a ghosting sensation 
akin to heat, a hint of ozone
and then the flame, cloven
and hovering. On the briny tongue,
the Name is a gale, a hot wire:
bold, boundless, crackling with power.

---

Laurie Klein
Poet & Author

Laurie has been published in The Southern Review, New Letters, Saint Katherine Review, Plough, Solum, Every Day Poems, and other journals and anthologies and is the author of Where the Sky Opens, and Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh.

Photography by Stan Krotov