Self-portrait as Job

At night, I wait for the moment when I can imagine 
silence as a kind of womb-- where I might float
like a jellyfish whose digits have not yet

poked through, a tangle of complicated wires
in a plastic pouch. How can I go back to that place
where everything is still waiting to develop? That
little pulse no larger than a bud before it becomes

a furnace, an engine, a jar for holding tears.
That vessel not yet covered with boils or chafed
to indistinction, not yet lipped by every creature

looking to augment its stores of salt. I've
surpassed almost every boundary for what old-
time prophets would call tribulation, yet only my
voice is the one still crying out of the wilderness.

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