Incarnate Poem by Kelly Vinal

Suffering trials, she trudges the slick ice slope
Stumbling against gravity’s pull, she might
Dress her wounds with impenetrable sadness
When she finds the fortress gates

Yellow sun washes the clouds crimson in dusk
A lone swan high in migratory channels, lost
Contrails leading home, or new beginnings
Stirs of life in desert dust

Might well leave our skins behind, probative of growth
Heave legacies in these snowy impressions
To be discovered. dissected. studied.
Bird bones, sandstone fossils; wreckage

What tempest possesses that she does not
Mastery of the heavens, the slope’s goal
Thrust-up in splendorous daggers, to God’s hand
The ice refracting crimson dusk