Theartofmann

I’m trying to build something.

Not a shelter.
Not a name.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work.

So I set the pieces down.
Wood. Bone. Black. Glass.
A circle that will not close.

Only the hand moving.

Outside the light keeps going.

I am working toward a shape that will remain…

There is a face beneath the face
and beneath that a mouth that will not close.

The eye watches itself watching
and calls that knowing.
But the thing coiled behind it
has no name that can be kept.

It feeds on the silence between decisions.
It drinks from the red seam of consequence
and leaves the body standing
as if nothing has passed through it.

Men have worn many masks
to soften the edge of what they are.
They have crowned themselves with leaves
and called it mercy.

But the leaves remember the root
and the root remembers the dark.

There is no clean dividing.
No gesture that undoes the first one.

Only the turning.
Only the slow and certain revelation
that what you carry
has always been carrying you.

It is the light that tells you where to go.

Illuminating the seat of contemplation.
Rewarding the long hours of thought—
of attention—
of rendering presence into darkness.

Becoming more in a glance
than the manipulations of kingdoms.

And yet

less than a breath

and everlasting.