Triptych by Danielle Pieratti

‘Triptych‘ by Danielle Pieratti is a dream-like scene that at once expounds a loaded world contained in a moment, a sail ‘unhooked’ and unfurling through a countryside picture. The poem holds an entire scale of refracted imagery, from the everyday image of two people, one observing the other while knee-high in mud, to the wider biblical echoes of bloodied hands and bleating lambs. It’s the kind of poetry that challenges, that warrants re-readings and that leaves the reader in a beautiful state of mystery. 

Triptych

“…if I stepped out of my body I would break
into blossom.”   — James Wright, A Blessing

Between my fingers, the metal staple
Is precarious; the barb it hugs

like a held bug. Hooked then
unhooked, I’m an open sail–

I dwarf my maker. So I stand,
mid-calf in mud. Somewhere

a lamb is bleating.
The dried blood on my hand

runs freely, touched again by rain,
then sleet–river through an oddly

common cosmos. Down a ways,
flannelled, you unravel a drum

of barbed wire against wet drift, clay soil
and rotting leaves, not knowing

we are younger than we’ll ever be.
I want to take a sapling with me–

the young beech I seize,
with copper leaves–forbidden

currency. As if either of us
would leave here empty.

Danielle Pieratti

From: Fugitives