Body of the Hour
       

To say, the soul

is like saying, the clock
lost its body and went on ticking.

Shadow-body, this one
who lived behind the bat-faced
bone of the pelvis

raised in the slicked-back hackle of blood . . .

To say, comfort me now in the hour
of my loss is

to be the hour, always.
To be Lord Almost.
Mother So-Close.

To be this time each time
you stop—put down the fork
or turn the page and look up:

The meadow in a lather of white
four-o-clocks, the birthmarked
butterfly moving

as if written—erased—written . . .
I remember once in this world
I was an absence,
like you. Like you.

Copyright © 2010 Beckian Fritz Goldberg All rights reserved
from Reliquary Fever
Western Michigan University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission