“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

HYMNING

The appeal that harmony
makes of each bloom
of flesh, each rot
fractal overlapping

matter as light
of its likewise self
shines uncowed by
the sloth of thought

to come as a bloom
of flesh in the open
mouth that is morning’s
body gone song

in the breath sun
makes of its courtly
and distant throb
My son you are weak

beside your own engulfed
manner of flowering
like a shadow that thins
itself into the blade-strew

of rents broaching
the earth and laden
with pinwheel darkness
To blister softly

as the leaves unfurl
and luff in the coil
of wind that wefts
the air to air and

one’s skin to sun’s
simmering orbit
and each gloomy suture
that traces violence

from the world back
to our body belongs
to us as a limb
even as it instantly

absconds like wind
to return in a fled
and phantom pulse
To reenter the margin

of one’s cellular
cacophony only
to stream out in
undignified gulps

when the myriad
splitting atoms turn
over in profusion
To furrow or fold

against the slow greed
that is detachment
so that each coincidence
returns us to the other

and away from the cult
of separation that has
become synonymous with
blind political stupidity

To look upon wood
with the same obvious
glory we do flesh
or some crop of stone

with the same wonder
we mark a child’s
groping frustration
My love I have known

you first and through
that knowing have
remembered a world
so as to reenter it

impurely and perplexed
as befits the senses
which cross in awe
this ever so tenebrous

lurch of moment
that overlaps the next
to form a rhizome
without the benefit

of direction divine
but flowering oblique
with an ignorance
of fear that inhabits

non-human life
To leave humanity
in the great hope
that our entwinement

with the immediate
may extend all as
one’s breath is thrown
to churn amid the air’s

already intoxicating
and transparent muddle

THE FIRST THING A THING

The first thing a thing

is is a question. One wakes

already in the midst

of things and must go

questing after

the unfolding the being

of each thing successively

presents. What could be further

from mundane than

the forbearance of things? I ask

the light what it

is and it replies

like a mountain, silently

exhuming metaphor from

its path like a gnat. And yet

there remains a thing

to which light is still

beholden. Originary holder, huge

and insoluble all

at once. Give up? Air is our

greatest teacher. Its entire

being consists

in allowances, letting the others

emanate. Only the air is more

humble than mountains. It’s so

tough it hugs all day long.

And yet perhaps

this questing is at the heart

of the problem. Man

turns the cadences

of this sensuous expanse

into things of thought. Surely

the light goes on without

the fiddling of neurons. No one

would claim to know

the mountain more clearly or

even the mystery a tree

brings to our eyes, which allows

the air a voice in quaking.