Poetry as the Soul’s Self-Diagnosis

“We write to taste life twice,

 in the moment and in retrospect.”

                                 ~Anais Nin

Rumi once wrote:

Sell your cleverness

and buy bewilderment.

I think I know why.

 

Yesterday on the television

a tornado

destroyed everything

in its path

as it meandered

willy-nilly

through Rolling Fork,

Mississippi.

Did you see

how objects

held out

no safety?

 

Inside the hospital

I, too,

am an object

ill at ease

in my body,

illogical in

my dreams.

My mind, its own

round the clock

news on channel 5.

 

Had it been possible

to be this strong

if my heart

had not been broken

in innumerable places;

a smashed clock

thrown against the wall

of youth,

or am I meant

to decipher

the timeless

with my own 

two hands?

 

This nose bleed

would like to

return me

to the sea.

Why keep

my blood

to myself

in so red

a world?

If everything flows

downward

toward

what's left

behind,

then why

all this

clamoring

uphill?

 

When my body

betrays me,

and it will,

I intend to

be my own

medicine.

Either way,

I am best

in small doses,

diluted

by intervals

of silence.

 

Meanwhile,

to the doctors

who misspend

days on end

trying to reconcile

the mystery of

my soul’s reveries,

I leave

this poem

at the edge

of a ruin.

 

03/28/23