—after Psalm 105 lines 28-33
Flower-thin darkness came down around you,
genius of things that fit into things—my ghost child
fit fish into water, blood into fish, pale into blue.
Flower-thin darkness came down around you,
crowding things into your hungry heart until you
crowded yourself out. Frictioning leafless and wild,
flower-thin darkness came down around you,
genius of things that fit into things—my ghost child.
Donna Spruijt-Metz’s books are To Phrase a Prayer for Peace (Wildhouse Publishing, 2025), General Release from the Beginning of the World (Free Verse Editions, 2023), And Scuttle My Balloon (with Flower Conroy, Pictureshow Press 2025) and her translation from the Dutch of Lucas Hirsch’s Wu Wei Eats an Egg (Ben Yehuda Press 2025). Chapbooks include Slippery Surfaces, And Haunt the World (with Flower Conroy). and Dear Ghost (winner Harbor Review Editor’s prize). Her poems appear in Poem-a-day, Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She’s an emeritus professor, MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and former classical flutist. She gets restless.
photo credit Alexis Rhone Fancher
