Stepping Out of the Light

Fog swaddles the

trunks and so

delineates, from

a vast of green,

the silhouette of

each pine

on the slope.

Maybe it’s like that,

only all along it was

obscured by what — 

rush, distraction? Fog.

A pine. Querying

grosbeak. Something

shifts. You find

yourself in another

world you weren’t

looking for where

what you see is that

you have always been

the wolves

at the door. Left

ajar, gaping, your own

door. And you burst

in as the Mangler,

you gouge out

your right eye which

hath offended. And you

burst in as the Great

Liar gorging

on your own flesh

and as Won’t

Let Go who shreds

your tendons, gnaws

your femur. You can’t

stop bursting in,

coming upon yourself

alone, vulnerable, in the

privacy of your dying,

bending to pick up

with a tissue a crushed spider

from the bedroom floor,

half-sensing in your solar

plexus the forces

of that which cannot yet

be sussed, discovering yourself

once again already

to have been inside something

like an equation with

a remainder, a deodand, a

reminder of the impossibility

of reconcilement — 

to what? Once again. Forgive

yourself, they say, but

after you forgive

what you have lived,

what is left? You can’t

set aside the jigger

of  the present from

the steady pour of hours

or even differentiate

trails of ants

scurrying through some

massive subterranean network

from the shredded

remains of a galaxy

backlit by star glow. Time

to close the door you think

but your face is changed,

so many crow’s feet. You

must be on

to the next stage

in which you begin

to recognize

your mortal body,

that nexus of your various

holds on the world, as

repository of every-

thing you didn’t know

you took in, human

and not, all of it

charged and reactant

which accounts for the trembling

in your hands as now

you discern the

body of your body — 

like a still,

hanging bell

that catches and concentrates

each ghostly, ambient

reverberation.