everything will be touching

'for the soul has wrung itself into atmosphere'

like those ancestral sea ferns 
that turned animal, 
the soul is 
a sinking thing,
roots under a seabed 
of mischief,
each grain of sand, a word, 
a tone,
asking non-questions,
asserting non-answers,
roiling a 'sssh' from 
synchronous frictions,
fat, ancient vocal folds
improvise their granulated song
from solids, motion-soft,
from causing
and being caused

go a few paces 
into fleshed 
forever, and
there is that 
caterpillar silence 
of the mornings,
which have 
a wingbeat per lifetime

(which, to count,
you would need 
to slow 
to the bliss
of disappeared interested 
in counting)

let us call it infinite

and you can listen in,
day or night,
to its bassy flutter,
the starlit wriggle of
centrifugal murmur,
centres everywhere,
droplets, 
units of humidity

for the soul has
wrung itself 
into atmosphere,
and taken an infant's eye
and hand,
to twist time
through plasmic 
kaleidoscope, once a wingbeat 
for comfort

your first and favourite home
was behind the eyelid,
then the belly,
because they were concave, 
and absorbed 
the ricochet
of your sudden density

now, you are exposed 
as the hill,
jutting out, 
progeny, supposedly,
to the wind,
ancestry tenuous,
you feel de-origined and dry 
from the heat of nowadays,
too much run-off,
and the land slides as you,
and you assume yourself too 
heavy 
for even the sky,
the widest basin of them all

so you want to be 
your own crater, 
lake-hidden,
you want to hold, 
to be the place
where things wind up,
and float, and have 
prolonged meetings  

if it's any consolation
you do not need a meteor,
only to tilt the head
and see, 
you are domed about yourself,
an upturned lake, 
a supple enclosure,
lives are climbing 
one another
all about you,
and though you are 
too busy holding
to hear your own hum,
not even your 
firmest embrace can muffle 
a microbiotic 
cacophony

so join it,
squeeze past and 
into yourself,
the worms have made you a bed,
rest as you wish your 
mother could —
the soils will open, 
the rains will get in,
you will be glad 
of what you are,
and everything 
will be touching

Stefan Caltier