The Blood’s Ragged Rhythm

The Blood’s Ragged Rhythm

James Cain

Sunday afternoon the bread knife slipped,
Opening my thumb from joint to tip.
While the towel lay beyond one outstretched hand,
the other filled with blood that
tumbled from the ragged wound into red palmward gullies.
Transfixed, I watched my heart’s every pulse
Send fresh cascades into those God-made hollows.

The rhythm dragged me inward then,
From bleeding hand to beating heart,
to find that organ pocked with wounds, 
All deep as graves in a post-plague churchyard.
Some boasted corners sharp and crisp as surgeon’s work;
But others gaped, their edges ragged as my wounded thumb.
For every old one, another new; one healed, reopened, healed again.
Each wound’s a death—and no grave stays empty long—

And I heard the rise and fall of unseen picks and spades,
keeping anguished time with my heart’s sick pumping.
And my hand throbbed right along, I guess,
but I do not pay attention.
I wander the boneyard of my heart,
The towel, unused, now dangling from my hand.

---

James Cain
Writer & Teacher

Jamie has published in FORMA, Conversatio Divina, Circe Institute, Classis, and In Touch Magazine. He works with teachers at a classical Christian school in Oklahoma City.

Painting by Cornelis Kruys