The Great Troublemaker Thinks About the Soul
       

I wait for you, monkeyshine,
white-throated thrummer of silence,

but every day asks me to accept the premise
you do not exist, or if you do,

the kindled message you carry is
a fable of wishful thinking.

Even this longing for you, the story goes,
broods and burns of its own volition.

Well, that may be. But iflong ago
someone wearing a bearskin hide felt you,

quirky and unnamable, move inside him
and drew on the cave wall

a fleet-footed, magical beast,
he must've conjured also the narrow

mountain pass that allowed your escape.
Thoughts, words, the slippery rope

of syntax that binds you to ideas—
every day I practice letting them go.

Every day I wait for you, open,
when you come flying through the gaps.

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Copyright © 2015 Sigman Byrd All rights reserved
from Wake Up, Sleepwalker
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Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission