“ON THE BASIS OF A GIFT THAT PRECEDES ALL SPEECH”

The gift before, the gift
preceding “thought” but
not that of the body, the gift
in perpetuity, that which has
not left us, a gift of the midwife
of “thought,” she who discloses
the basis of a gift that precedes
all speech, the song that shakes
in appeal’s response, the basis
of a tongue, which finds itself
lost in oscillations, in response
to that which precedes being
the gift subsequent to nothing
a stab of phenomena that pierces
the face of being, that ebbs only
to wax into bloom, the gift of
air, that invisible balloon giving
place to voice, the open that is
the condition of life needs not
be reviled, nor reveiled, not
beshrouded, the gift of air is
the gift of disclosure, of voice
that secretes itself by way of air
that plainest of substances, so
plain that it fills even our least
moments with dire wind, so
tough and unerring it sweeps
forgotten through the very
condition of thought itself
the gift that precedes the need
of giving, a manner of retuning
the slip of matter to its curdle
and sway, the midst that most
strikes us before the necessary
interventions of love, of need
that flows in its wolfing gait, of
swell and succor that arrives
from the body unbidden, as we
err into thought so weary of
breath, so bereaved by the fools
gold that is language, again
the gift that precedes this feral
unfolding, finally struck by how
slowly the air must love, the gift
of abundance abiding beside, as
air’s porous grope concedes to
loom and return, the gift that
wakes these atoms into singe