Intimate Geometries

The lens turned inside out.

Some days it is clear upon waking that what follows will involve certain reminders. About how, for example, I am at any given time rarely more than half-open or half-closed. Even when I thought I was more than aware of being somewhat too dense for my imagination’s preference, I am now the weary stranger offering directions to the inquiring heart, wondering whether its own spiraling rhythm is moving toward the center, or out. Or else, a shadow cut from its source, floating around like a kite. And it’s unclear, from this wavering axis, whether the metaphor is the blunt object sending an atom of awareness out into a larger field, or a mat to cushion the impact.

A Pilgrimage

Going to meet the dead.

May we remember to visit our dead,

that we won’t stop knowing them.

May we remember our place,

finding theirs.

Romantics, they say, have a reality problem

but I don’t know what it is. Maybe the dead 

will have some ideas.

Mortality is such a threat to continuity

––at least of culture, at least of certain

things we used to know,

they say.

***

Inspired by William Goodwin’s Essay on Sepulchres (1809).