Against the cessation of stops.
To see the shining belly of a gaze, hungry,
we warm to it because it looks like relief
from another madness, a way to peel
the clocks to feel the membrane of each
hour’s sections cool against tongues,
nectaring the Eden we missed, minutes
running off our chins from the body
of Time, our subsistence rations
after nothing of that space or any place
could reach us singing any––more,
though she tried, calling with an offer.
Remember the living.
There are plenty of good ways to lose yourself, many of which are to be welcomed as venerable guests. But not this. Don’t let me be dulled by the endless impact of the gears, the noise, the flood of what passes for knowing.
Remember sleep. Remember a meal.
Remember waiting, and to listen–– and look! What is that? Stay in the question.
There is sky. Here is earth. Remember water, and all that is invisible and necessary in the air.
Then, remember breathing.
These are basic things. You knew them as a child, even if you resisted: bedtime, mealtime, any unwelcome pause in your momentum.
But the world will pull you from it all, and away from matters of your substance.
Not the world, exactly––but the machine colonizing it: including our breath, our dreams, the simple act of looking.
Remember what you are. Remember touch. Remember, body.
Here is the place where you are. Remember, it is a powerful stranger.
After David Wagoner:
“Wherever you are is called Here,/ And you must treat it as a powerful stranger” (“Lost”).
