A Portion of the Body

The gods, at their least generous,
command all houses
to leave the earth and man
to walk upon the verge
no more.  Drowned
in some places. 
Burned in others.
There will be no written
record of this demise.
The beautiful replaced
by what is carved
in the wall.

I wake this morning to find
my life revealed as the last bits
of bruised night drift off me.
My shadow has come unsealed
spilling everywhere without restraint.
I am waiting for a message
from the other side.

The bright coins beside the bed
have been moved leaving the dust
beneath them disturbed.
Now I am certain that spirits
have spoken to me.  My failure
is understanding what they have said.

Ian Wilson

Under the category of way too much information, some time ago, I managed to get myself in trouble with anti-anxiety medication. The continuing use of meditation and hypnosis files led me out of the withdrawal to a clearer, less anxious mind. My contemplative practice is to use them at night, each night, before I go to sleep. The guides are British and Scottish and there is something about those foreign accents that is both calming and affirming. There's an interesting before and after in my poetry which reflects the meditation. Before, the poetry was far more associative, moving as a distressed mind might move from thing to thing, never lighting for long. The after finds a poetry that is more concrete and more willing to stay in the moment.

Ian Randall Wilson's fiction and poetry have appeared in a number of literary journals including the North American Review and Alaska Quarterly Review. He has an MFA in Poetry and in Fiction from Warren Wilson College. His first full-length collection, Ruthless Heaven, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.  By day he works at Sony Pictures in Los Angeles.