Pantoum Beginning with Sermon Notes

Tania Runyan

Be a flute that aligns yourself
with the breath of the Holy Spirit
skimming across the open wounds
of your tarnished body.

The breath of the Holy Spirit
rushes through the embouchure
your tarnished body
wrestles with in the dark,

rushes through the embouchure
that lays your synapses bare
and restless in the dark.
It’s more survivable to drink

and lie there, synapses bare
and gone soon enough–soon enough–
to the more survivable drink
of fluid in the lungs.

Gone soon enough. Soon enough.
But certainly, there’s a gravelly tune
like fluid in the lungs
you’re meant to rasp out first.

Certainly, there’s a gravelly tune
in your being–a flute aligning yourself
with a bent rasping, an all-out
scraping across your open wounds.

Tania Runyan
Poet

Tania Runyan’s latest book is her autobiography Making Peace with Paradise (T.S. Poetry Press).

Photography by Lena Polishko

Ekstasis Magazine