I miss seeing you smile.
To me it seemed that you laughed and kissed me for everything, but it was probably a mistaken impression, a
result of shock!
wonder!

Could you imagine my surprise,
how it could be unexpected?
How often is the soul’s desire met?
I can recall not ever, ne’er, near naught
save in amniotic baptism, had every
object subject—every ancient tissue
attended by an enzyme—every ray of
sun snuck between the blouse’s buttons,
around my mother’s *******, and
divined upon me was let there been.
I cut myself following consciousness
with my longest fingernail, did laugh
too convulsed, tickled by light did induce my birth;
I cried (they’ll confirm this), I
wept to rob my mother herself, so it seemed,
inhaled the endless time and limitless space.
You can imagine my surprise then
with your covered mouth at my joke.

To me it seemed as if I had body again, hadn’t had a hand to grasp, hadn’t a hand with to grasp; then,
like had putty-gilded muscles earthed
unearthed, did.

Have you ever seen creation?—
well, yes, of course, it did not except you.
As close to ex nihilo as your patience can manage
you would have seen the time and space
repel each other in a nail’s length
of chaos, Fiat Vita, about which there’s little to be said.
My patience breaks in breath, Fiat Lux: when
time and space colors the light and refracts
the matrix and gives fire to my soul for a body.
Rilke writes, “Every Angel is terror,” which we
love, “because it calmly disdains to destroy us.”
I know! I know! I bite my nails penitent still.
And my patience does extend yet further, still within;
before my birth following it:

Look! I can open you this door,
give you that,
carry you thus far,
lead you here,
can reach your smiling mouth
with a terrorized will to kiss withal!
I can endure as the “arrow endures the bow”;
as all matter collapses upon itself in effort to grasp itself,
so it does to grasp all itself in one grand handful;
as atrophy takes me from you as quickly as I give you it,
I am surprised to find that I have retained all of you;
not expecting that you might have hid me, too, where
I would overlook, where only you could go, where
the light silhouettes, for me can just stop breathing.
I can see without patience—as much as light allows
and just as long.