I’ve lost myself in a wilderness
Not entirely of
My own making though
It does have roots in
My sloth, laziness I guess,
My unwillingness
To push through agitations that rose up,
Rise up, burble up,
Fragments I seem unwilling to
Lasso and beat into these barren,
Unkempt and
Fallow fields, these caverns
Missing
Some chance to join the
Rooted wilderness
I love beyond expressing
But I’m lost to that rich, spare landscape
In these last unpresent months.
Year. Years. I do not know.
If I want to be kind to myself I say
That I’ve been marinating
Perhaps
Perhaps not
Perhaps wishes, lies, dreams, truths and
Gazing across landscapes, into skies,
Stirring ancient questions
Are nothing more than indulgences
But I wish to find a fulcrum
I have been unable to put
Plea and deep heart into a universe
I no longer understand,
If in fact I ever did, save now and then in
Some infinitesimal starry,
Momentary nexus that comes along
Brushed when precious worlds
Collapse together
Still, my affair with words and spaces,
Emptiness, color, change, the shapes
Of sound and love
Float stymied and unmoored
In ordinary, endless days.
I do not know if she, I, I guess, can return;
I’m not hoping
For any continuity
I am just being in some way brave
Admitting that if I cannot write
I cannot imagine how I’ll breathe.
In the fragile, loamy new days
Portending spring, I try to take
Some deeper breaths
I’ve been here in this
Hilly hallowed hollow before.
Far away, now, I dare to feel
The ringing bells.
