We drove
40 miles into the desert
a book of poems on my lap
where the great themes of life hit me squarely
the impossibilities of love
the inevitability of death
as I live with a certain unvarying awareness
of the breach
linking the small power of my own passion
and the devastating realities of the universe –
birth, death, creation, eternity, the gods
a validation of faith
amid the emotions of love and wonder
He tried
To build a bridge
between the prosaic deadness
of the human heart
and that which is inexpressible -
the privileging of the broken
the open
and the vulnerability of the unfinished -
a hole in his skull
that he whistles through
and points like a finger towards heaven
There is too much to know
Too much to want...
His skull becomes more than just a skull –
more than just a roof
it becomes a moving, breathing player
in an expansive natural order -
the holey bones become a cloud formation
an easer of storms
of the salt breath that inveigles the sea’s oxygen
so that which is devoutly to be desired
is not the closure of constant cloudpour
(far less a steady streaming of sunlight)
but a time without end
of sticking together
and breaking up -
that will breathe the storm
into and out of
his always open bones
The Gunslinger
©crisstiena
Gold trophy winner
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