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Today my bear self slipped out the back door
didn't even close it behind him, let the wind in to rattle the house with its pointy, cold teeth. Wrecked the neighbor's compost bin on the way into the darkness that enveloped him the way a secret envelopes lips and stamps them with a shudder. Left what was left of me to go about the trudge of life: work, chores distractions. See, when my animal leaves me in this mortal hull, leaves me to the tame sparrows that will peck out my eyes, leaves me with the jigsaw puzzle language and head crowded with marquee scripts, it's a warning: time to burn something maybe. Time to go down into the basement and roar until the house trembles like a temporary heart. Time ride the bear two fists of fur and face of brambles into the cave under the lake where the dead are busy making souls and the Night washes Her sun-frayed garments. Nothing is more profound than the sight of a bear kneeling beneath the earth of my love. A shattering of logic, the kind of opening Night requires in order to whisper the secret code that unlocks the coffin for so long I've pretended was a life. I can hear the house contract in the cold the way capillaries withdraw from skin it's a natural habit in winter to stretch out one's arms then draw in hold in fetally in selfishly in all winter long just as the hoarding bears contract into giant furred seeds and squirrels build their little whirlwind nests of leaves high up wrap featherduster tails around noses and implode into a thoughtless sleep trees stand still boulders drag snow over their smooth hides and say less than the nothing they usually say meanwhile I, madman, who pretends snow is like dirt am raking green leaves around my body and calling out for the last lingering bird to land like a kiss. my head has stopped.
the rustling panic of fallen leaves falls away as I place my ear to a hole in the thick earth and listen to the proclamations of stones. things are moving down there so subliminally it is if they never began. to say "I love you" in stone-speak takes centuries. dying old people only get to hear the first letter O which reminds them how we all loop back to the source and how we, each of us, is born to complete our own perfect zero. but what about the second O? the salmon knows, because he is of the water, below reflection and dies better than us breathing raw air on the shore of his liquid world. me, I am still trying to sort out a secret birds have told me, the way one can learn how to stitch something to the sky so that it lingers like a star. a feather is required. I'm far behind but catching up. I can thread a needle and at least there is utility in that, when I sewed my eyes shut and grew this emptiness everything started whispering. trees made room for me to stand upright beside them and take my small place in the daily lifting of the sky. the bellies of clouds slid longing off my hands. there is no way to describe that texture. if you will ask me how I know all these unscientific things are true stay until it snows and the dead among the leaves speak their nervous rustlings no more and I will teach you the how and the how not of it under a cool white blanket. |
Poetry LogPoems are posted here when I'm ready to share them. I often don't title my poems. The date you see above the poem may be the date it was posted here and not necessarily the date it was created. To see more, click on the Archives below. Archives
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Unless otherwise noted, all content ©Paul-William Gagnon, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs license.
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