Trauma Unit

It was never meant
to burst from the body
so fiercely, to pour unchanneled
from the five wounds
and the unbandaged brow,
drowning the dark wood,
staining the stones
and the gravel below,
clotting in the air
dark with God’s absence.

It was created for
a closed system–the unbroken
rhythms of human blood
binding the body of God,
circulating hot, brilliant,
saline, without interruption
between heart, lungs,
and all cells.

But because he was once
emptied, I am each day refilled;
my spirit-arteries
pulse with the vital red
of love; poured out,
it is his life
that now pumps through
my own heart’s core.  He bled and died
and I have been transfused.

~Luci Shaw