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Open Window |
When the sun sets
turning us into shadows,
we crave the ancient order,
a transformation
from nowhere to somewhere,
from me and you to us,
a truth not there until seen,
not seen until named,
not real until held.
Being alive is to organize this chaos.
A Bach fugue does that,
so does a cut diamond, a daisy,
a bird that flies in through the
open window to a world with no sky,
no certain landing,
no familiar enemies,
like in old castle towns
where the streets were built as mazes,
where armies would see the prize
but not the way to get there,
turning back on themselves,
biting their tails like hoop snakes.
Take away our
pacemakers and metronomes
and the world narrates fragments
of fantasies of what we used to be,
like old photographs stored out of sequence,
all emotions conflagrated
into some opera of the past.
We need to trust that
the fire will stay in the oven,
the truck in the lane,
the baby in the crib,
that our songs are whole,
our cells are clean,
and the blood in our wounds
will always return to the heart.
{first published in Ibbetson Street (Summer 2005)}
copyright 2005
Jack
Cooper |
