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Meditatio

By Mary Karr

In the back’s low hollow sometimes
a weightless hand guides me, gentle pressure
so I tack soft as a sailboat. (Go there)

Soften the space between your eyes (smudge
of eucalyptus), the third eye
opens. There’s the wide vermilion sky

that cradled us before birth,
and the sun pours its golden sap
to preserve me like His precious insect.

Mary Karr’s fourth collection of poems, Sinners Welcome, has just been published. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.
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