Troubled Conscience

by Elizabeth Weir

I’m digging a hole with a coffee spoon,

scrambling eggs with a cardboard trowel,

combing my hair with the garden rake.

Image credit: Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I used words that bruised, caused tears

that shattered like beads of mercury.

Seized with guilt, I know what I must do.

I will plant thorned guilt, give it light,

and air, expose it to the world,

an invasive, spiteful, expendable.

When it shows its first green nub,

ever ambitious, I’ll batter it

with a bottle, scorch it with a candle.

I’ll grub out the hurt I caused

feed it to the foxes, hurl it high

for gulls to snatch as it falls.

This is me now, winged as a kite,

shoulders a-dance in a forgiving sky,

loose as wind-shifted feathers.

Where old guilt lurked,

in the attic of my head, I’ll seed

regret, a weed of gentler habits.

***

Elizabeth Weir

Elizabeth Weir’s High on Table Mountain, was nominated for the 2017 Midwest Poetry Book Award. Kelsey Books published her second book, When Our World Was Whole, which was selected for the National Poetry House Showcase. Her work has been published in many journals, including Comestock Review, Agates, The London Reader, Gyroscope and Adana.