A Thin Line by Catharine Jones

A Thin Line
 
What is it for this white woman
to sit in a cushy seat looking at a screen
to become prickly uncomfortable  
watching images of some of her kind    
doing violence to others 
who are her kind
but not the same skin colour?
I hold my partner’s hand
after credits close
as if the end
gives permission to make white quiet
snuffling noises
rendered speechless.
 
2
I go home, pace. Sleepless.
I search the web for images to give voice
for broken noises in my body.
Drinking coffee I find Kiefer’s sculpture
“Breaking the Vessels”
his take on the tree of life.
Three tiers of books
of invisible words in a precarious balance
fragile, gray papers
between glass sheets, some angled
eventually fall   
to the ground, shatter
like spirits that move in and out of me.
 
3
Near morning
I find Kiefer’s painting, “Athanor.”
A figure lying on the earth    
looks up at the vastness
of the night sky,   
a communion    
of the thinnest line of light
from chest to starry heavens.

Catharine Jones

Catharine Jones is both an artist and a poet.  She is actively  engaged in workshops and writing groups including Rhino Forum, Serious Play with Alice Goerge, and Iowa Writers' Workshop.  She has been published in Poetry Cram and The Journal of Modern Poetry, and a professional journal "Psychological Perspectives."