The way that poetry informs a life, that life flows through a poem.
The poem's pulse
through the body, palpable.
"Palpate: To examine by touch."
The poem examines you, from inside out,
palpates vein & whorl,
tincture, red eddy,
more intimately than any scalpel-probe.
This unencumbered world –
leaves breeze-brindled, lampstand in brass, tick-tick clock on wall …
these gaze with the world in through your eyes
find rhythms and a message as to
their own divergent tempos, images.
No longer mere reflection, rather confirmation
a confluence of mystery's anatomies
no longer – if ever – dual.
Ruminant response, systole- diastole,
table's wood finds you
smooth-grained, cool,
yellowing across to brown, to black
in the dark-pooled shade of day.