A great gift!!

The End of Beginning


Sometimes a door shuts, so softly the air barely whispers
It seems a small thing, the pull of hydrogen, carbon
Then you notice that something you've known all your life has gone missing.
Like an ear that goes deaf, a dog that's gone lost  -- here and then not.

It seems a large thing, the attraction of carbon to carbon.
You spend some time feeling the edges this something fit into,
Something whose secrets you¹ve held in your throat, here and then not,
Know the shape of your loss against sky til its absence is no longer new.

You spend some time missing the spaces that held it.
Still alive in your cells, in the bright flash of memory
You sing for the missing until being gone is something forgotten
Except for the lightning it makes through your limitless dreams.

Still alive in your cells, in the you that is past
The scent you've rubbed in your palms now is absent
Except in the tangle of vast inner space.
Sometimes a door opens on a landscape unknown.

Oxygen cracks with the scent of ozone and salt.
Now the ground softens, the air opens outward
You pass through the door, embracing  the space
Where gravity loosens its grip on your footsteps.

Now the hills melt, the air becomes rare
Your lungs are balloons from which you're suspended
And gravity loses its grip on your feet.
There is nothing around to signify human.

Your lungs become wings with which you can fly
Below there's no tree, no house and no person
There is nothing around not even a stranger
By which to measure your rise and your fall.

Below and above is a landscape of light
No hunger or loss or understood language
By which to measure your joy or your fear.
It's a small thing. It's simple. You¹re free.




janeannflint 2005