What’s the Point? How to Balance What Moves Below with All the Above

 

What kingfishers snatch in that other world,

where buoyancy and gravity agreed

to wed and jointly forge a dancing flow,

they bring it up and hold it close

 

to their cherubic chests and thus they cut

someone’s threaded line of fate

with a peck and strike by the tip

of their bill lightened to the sun.

 

But what water is to those they catch

is what wings are to kingfishers,

they make them light, they let them fly

 

as they peek and poke into what the other

nether space jealously hoards inside—

but for me it’s poetry that helps me dance.

Why What Truly Is Should Belong Less to Me Than What Isn’t?

 

All that truly is cannot help but know

what transpires and what always holds.

Irrespective of the place, notwithstanding time.

And only thus laws each soul inherits,

as its vow and lot, can keep

a ceaseless watch.

 

But whose fault is it

if the soul remains reserved

and speaks to one no more?

That fault is his not hers

and likely worse

if long ago forgotten—

 

like a caries in an already insensate bone,

a snap, a crack, a flaw

that fails to bridge or fill

if one unlearns, forgoes

whom and why the holy heals,

only if one befriends one's own soul.