Go On, Sure, Why Not

My beloved black bamboo seems wrong

today   here   next to the live oak on my

terrace. Though as I say that I know it's

what I've said each time I've arrived at

this precise moment, before I pause then

notice a tribe of red ants stuck like dried

blood bits in thin cracks in the oak bark. To

go on, at that point, always seems an inadequate

description of   what it is we do when

Brahma wakes. Even living fails to describe

this inhabiting of eternity in which we

pause occasionally and insist upon staking claim

to an aesthetic         point of view. One wants

to be singled out. At the same time, one

wants to be hidden in a thicket of sharp

black leaves               to be nothing

but a pair of orange eyes   without

the human burden of self-awareness. Pure fear

pure hunger   pure procreant urge   pure

thoughtless push. When Hamlet says   My

thoughts be bloody   or be none at all   he's

thinking too of the grave where there is

no thinking blood   no bloody thinking.

Copyright © 2009 Gail Wronsky All rights reserved
from Crazyhorse
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission