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
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Absolutely beautiful!