Father Damien Observes His Feet Donna Pucciani Pucciani Page 1 If life is a frozen pond etched by skates of Flemish youths built like oxen, scarved and ruddy in fields of snow, sniffing winter the way a hound scents a rabbit darting into the woods, then death is a colony of faceless souls, a forest of scarred skin, lost fingers, claws and stumps, its leaves a canopy of bindings that tape a hand together, or patch a foot for walking crutchless. And heaven is a jungle teeming with orchids, filling a hole where a nose once was, with stems of clean bone and petals of immaculate flesh, where strong hands, once mittened and      stinging, lace leather work boots and wield a hammer to build white houses and a church on the green. And hell is an island where lava of ash and fire cannot scour pocked cheeks, cannot swallow lesions inch by senseless inch or, where nostrils merge, cannot mend the dark void of breath. So sighs a Belgian priest in the hills of      Kalaupapa who peels off his socks, and, in an evening ritual, soaks his feet in a scalding tub, only to discover he cannot feel his toes. Donna Pucciani's first chapbook, The Other Side of Thunder, was published in Great Britain in 2006; her book Jumping Off the Train is forthcoming from Windstorm Creatives.