The brevity of life catches one short of breath.
We thought there was time to inhale once more, only to discover a final exhalation.
Was it a dream, a hallucination, or merely the meeting of the circle?
Stars. Dust. Return.
Tag: philosophical poetry
Night Reading
The poem finally opened itself:
after readings enough, I saw
how the line broke, why
that word and not another.
The pleasure—self forgotten
in attending, briefly lodged
in someone else’s precision,
language doing its work.
Book to shelf. Poem to page.
The body turns to its ablutions:
water, soap, the day undone.
I glance up at the mirror—
it will not hold image.
Water still running. My hands, still wet, suspended.
The book already distant on its shelf,
the lines loosening, unheld.
Genesis: The Creation of Adam
He formed him
from the ground—
clay still wet,
clinging.
He bent close.
spent breath passed—
spittle,
the damp of earth
at the mouth.
And the man lived:
warm,
hungry,
leaking already
what he would lose.
This was not corruption.
This was the gift.
Psalm at the Glass
Sand—
before sight,
before consent,
light broken among grains,
each scattering its claim.
Heat intervenes:
lightning’s instant law,
the long travail of fire,
a stone descending
without regard.
What shatters
learns another order.
Glass remembers
its former dust.
In the mirror
a tower stands—
not stone,
but color
held by lead,
raised through fracture.
Harps flank it,
strings held still,
as if sound itself
were waiting
to be spared.
Notes lie as sand lies,
each apart,
each complete,
owing nothing
to the whole.
Or else the chord
was always present,
and hearing is the art
of consent.
Reflection is not the self,
but the hour
when the many
are allowed
to hold together.
The Year Begins Again
The year begins again, before we ask,
arriving as the light does—simply so.
We do not grieve what has passed.
Too few the days, the weeks, the months, the years
still allotted to our keeping.
We do not hold them, nor pretend to save;
we meet the hour as it comes, unadorned,
and give it back in care, as best we can.
Northcoast Antiquarian 