Like Life

Life is only understood in reverse order,
philosophically,
we trust the disasters and miracles
as necessary catastrophic shifts
and dramatic scene changes
the curtain drops
the Act is up.

When the world as we knew it
once hovered in equipoise-
disintegrated and crumbled before
our thin-soled shoes,
we thought of tides
and how they rip the earth
from undertow,
and leave us
to balance
less.

As chaos is to entropy,
we stand our ground despite the speed
of orbits and bullets
hoping to break the spell
of wait.

Pen and ink drawing by Henry Fuseli (1741-1845) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Under the see

Here, you in the middle.

Music in dancing smoke.

Dense vaporous heat wrapped in red

ripples and shards carry and throw

light bent, fractured panes

strewn before open eyes

widely receptive, a hungry glint

absorbing the whole shaft.

Do not speak of experience

like goosebumps and coincidence,

deja vu and waking dreams worn

on this path. You picked the way

reflected back in pouring pail eyes to

spinning sapphire seas stuck inside your inertial feeling.

You cannot tell

of the way the moon

holds onto you in the crook

of its long arm showing you more.

Or how the sun

seduces you under its warm endless well

of desire to strip you down, and suck you up.

Do not try to repeat what was implied

in the language

of hummingbirds that hover,

of cats that crowd around you,

of swaddled babes enrapt,

of elderly enduring and shaking

off your ghosts.

You stood under all too well. Father time and Mother earth,

hospitable surrogates serving

senseless, undecipherable epiphanies.

You see.

Image of painting by By William Savage Cooper, Phantasy c.1896 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.