“Ricorditi, ricorditi!” (Remember, remember!)
~ Dante, Purgatorio 27.22
Before morning, birdcalls ringing:
widening circles around where we lie, arms
still wrapped around each other in the dark.
And who will break the silence first
today, before it lights its thousand
fires? After surrendering
the condition of dream, we could give
ourselves to the work that our hands
and bodies do without even
needing to think—last night's dishes,
clothes stained with mud or musk; dust
in the corners, weeds that overtake
plots in the garden. Or we could give
ourselves to that other condition
which leads the mind into chamber
after nautilus chamber of contemplative
bliss: art, science, thought. Are they so
different? With each there's margin for all
sorts of error. Which is to say: under the first
leaves, that first, drawn morning, what we call
snake was only the rustle of thought blooming
into desire into hands reaching for the bolder
color of experience. In either case, the world
before us was already changing; changed.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.