What if we were like those ancient Assyrians
and had to carve the faces of our gods in stone?
What would these faces look like? At first we

see the terror, for to look on the face of a god is
to look into the eyes of death, and who can sustain
such a steady gaze? And we understand the act

of creation is also an impetus toward death. After
such terror has been met, the heft of the chisel grows
lighter, and the face now becomes maternal, for we all

spring from the loins of earth, and we all have been
mothered into some form of acceptance of this land.
Still how does one etch such a temporary expression?

At last the chisel flies from the hand, and we exclaim
there is no need to flesh out these gods . . . and this is
when the face of the god changes into our own image.

And image has no importance at all -- whether we love
our own image or hate it -- for all images fade and are
replaced by a fresher version, and this is where we go

to work on our next vision, the next version of the soul,
pounded out of the substance of one brief life, one brief
endeavor to carve the face of the many gods into stone.

Jettison: Ready To Let Go

It sweeps and glides to roll and bend, all words,
all thoughts, all crisscrossing the sacred paths
of everyone who went before, for even though

they did the same, challenged the same, and in
the end produced something new beyond anything
else, it cannot end here. It cannot end because

it’s a snake without end, or better, a brown river
who never arrives at the sea, an under-current or
hidden reptile who lives to produce hints that can

only be seen by the shape of the gesture -- it sweeps,
it glides, it rolls and bends. Some would see it as
a prayer, some would view it as a love, while other

poor souls will fashion it into a poem, yet all would say
it’s clearly attached to us, but not our bodies, attached
by some fulcrum of the soul, whispering, whispering,

to say you will never die, no need to listen to that old
flesh of yours, for you are sweeping down the brown
river, safe inside, waiting to jettison the shell around you.

The Rebellion Against Flesh

Once the work of the poem revealed
itself, you clearly understood, although

such simple knowledge took thirty
years to come clear. The task is to

rebel against the flesh, this substance
from which our hearts are made, this

transitory arrangement of cells and
blood; you would not have seen this,

back when you were immortal. But all
hearts decay in the end, and only those

children who have rebelled will be given
the means to live forever in future hearts.

All Poetry by Ward Kelley