Body in Total Time

Body in Total Time

Where solar alphabets murmur
cranial plates interleave
                 bearing thought

                                          (thrushes wheel)

A thirst parallel to the bone
whose canals communicate
                dreaming marrow

                                          (deeper blue)
As root bulb and tip
desire to exist
                within without

                                          (lighting the flesh)

A plexus of nerves
speak in secret
                holding fast

                                          (to the wake)

Three heartbeats
give receive and sob
                the right note

                                          (inwardly cleaving)

Inhale     exhale
an unseen verb reaching
                from breath to blood

                                          (bookending life)


A first incision
                being what it is
at the entrance to self

                                          (outside-in)

Capillaries opening
                toward another
as I and Thou

                                          (blood to milk)

As nephrons escape the eye
know what to do
                without knowing

                                          (space and time)

Two lobes
                so many branches
to give & receive

                                          (growing back)

Organ of flux
                that voice in time
each generation beginning anew

                                          (in every cell)

For Alejandra Pizarnik

Solitude’s first (and last) feather
winnows from every word
a prayer-size emptiness

how burns the cold.

Postscript to He Resigns

O Berryman, what to say,
above (or below) an empty heart
singing the grief you cry?
Leave on the page
                     you leave all before
                                                making off.