Something Wild

 

“How should we like it were stars to burn

 With a passion for us we could not return?

 If equal affection cannot be,

 Let the more loving one be me.”

                         ~W.H. Auden

 

i

 

If a tree sapling burst through

the floor and stood pointing

its finger toward the door,

is this my mind showing me

something I have never seen

with my own eye,

and if not my mind,

then what and why?

 

If it’s true, that

everything that’s natural

is made of God,

then is this his limb

forcing its way in?

Or is it mine?

We, who are too wild

for so mild a place.

What better than tears

to wash a face?

 

 

ii

 

My melancholy begins at 6:00 A.M.,

a swaddled newborn in so much gauze,

as morning gives birth to mourning,

a sober nativity of unexplained loss.

 

To read death’s autobiography

its best to sleep,

with resurrection the only proper epilogue.

Then why not pray the Lord our soul to keep,

though it was I who slept just like a log.

 

If every day must begin with goodbye,

why saddle me with grieving my

loss of everything,

with all I was a moment ago

now gone?

Why not reassemble a self

to improve upon what’s wrong?

If I’m the griever of my own loss only,

then perhaps this be how life

is made holy.

 

My sadness is a soup

from wilted greens.  

My longing, a fragrance

that speaks in dulcet tones.

I honor life by missing things

around me, as this is

how I love when I’m alone.

 

This being no one’s dream

but mine only,

I dare expect to be misunderstood.

No one has had this dream but me,

really, no one! What sort of

other man wood?

 

Like pain in the extremity

that means nothing but to me,

after all its I who must feel it's

sting.

Would that my gentle wail

blight everything in its wake,

all I said, did and saw and lost,

occurring for my own sake.

 

The best man plays best

his role and not much more,

who makes a boat of his room

to reach the shore.

 

My memories live in me

like meat within a sleeve.

I remember willy-nilly

the whirl of scattered leaves.

Pieces of a puzzle

putting a self together

is the best way to recount

how I remember.

 

I live backwards;

the whole having been

here all along.

The forests I once walked

along in song

live inside me waiting

to retrace my steps;

though diaries in green ink

were all they kept.

 

I wake and everything

I said and did are gone,

all that’s left:

this empty moment

waiting to be filled.

Now I try to live

more slowly

than the throng

and wake to greet

the morning

my soul has willed.

 

1/24/23