Excerpt from A Night Without Armor by Jewel Kilcher, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I Miss Your Touch

I miss your touch
all taciturn
like the slow migration of birds
nesting momentarily
upon my breast
then lifting
silver and quick--
sabotaging the landscape
with their absence

my skin silent without
their song
a thirsty pool of patient flesh



Insecurity

you don't call
I check again
I become uneasy--
is this a frame?
Suddenly I'm not so sure
I check my sources
each conversation becomes a crumb
how easily I'm led
how stupid I've been
to believe
you could be
loving me
you who can not be seduced
by anything other than
the temperance
of need
each one facilitating the next
and suddenly I see my place
the phone rings
you say hello
but I don't believe you


 

I Say to You Idols

I say to you idols
of carefully studied
disillusionment

And you worshipers
who find beauty
in only fallen things

that the greatest
Grace
we can aspire to
is the strength
to see the wounded
walk with the forgotten
and pull ourselves
from the screaming
blood of our losses
to fight on
undaunted
all the more




It Has Been Long

It has been
long and
Bony since
your willing
ways since
those thirstful
days of
summer nights
and Burning Beds




As a Child I Walked

As a child I walked
with noisy fingers
along the hemline
of so many meadows
back home

Green fabric
stretched out
shy earth
shock of sky

I'd sit on logs like pulpits
listen to the sermon
of sparrows
and find god in Simplicity
there amongst the dandelion
and thorn.

From A Night Without Armor: Poems by Jewel. Copyright (c) 1998 by Jewel Kilcher. Reprinted by arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.