With my hands I measure
the space around my heart
whenever I feel those moments
of ambush— when in great anxiety,
in fright or terror or sorrow
the spirit flutters from me
like a thin silk flag, like a covey
of birds in the bush. Where does it go
in the ticking seconds just after,
before someone remembers how to call
for its return? The sun is a disc
in burning fragments, and water
its liquid twin. High on the cliffs,
I know our dead sit in their library
of hanging coffins. Their bones are lighter
than husk, but not yet lighter than air. Like them
I am trying to learn to keep something back
even in passage: some thread to tether
the wrist to the doorpost, the belled sound
of a name to pierce the fog of distress.
In response to Via Negativa: Heart to heart.
Wow …