I was above and below myself,
in the same way a downpour graces a desert.
I saw with my eyes closed the unseen things.
The wind ran through me
and I was a flower sorrowed with sunlight.
Great were the many contradictions.
Dark it was, where terror wandered,
a night containing all other nights.
Until the hand had cured my fever.
Until I rose in the bed of the profane cubit,
sunlight like honey over my eyes.
Like the sweetened breaths of mothers’ kisses.

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,400 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press) and Like As If  (Pski’s Porch), Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).