At

The unhinging of one’s consciousness from a fixed point
in time at which moment the sudden and flashflooded
realization slumbers through that every emotion that would
have unfolded in the rest of your day is somehow happening
all at once like a strobe light pulsing in your house of mirrors
in your heart of chambers—the disassembly of your matter.
And suddenly every autumn leaf has turned its yellow sight
on you as if to say, you precious dying thing, you beautiful
and violent tremor.  Just try grace like this.  Just try turning
so gold—every day—more alone.

Days

Pertaining to the ache across the chest like withered ropes holding
a small boat against an old dock against a huge sea, against a body,
the force of its ripping. The moon’s pitch and sigh for the tide.
The fish the color of your best friend’s house when you were little.
You glint and dissolve in all that shadow. Battered boat.
Clamor and shake. The sense of ribs gone candle wax.
The tensile strength of the rope, see muscle, see snapped open,
can’t you hear the strands burst at the water’s pull. Can’t
you drown in just a few inches of water . . .

End

The realization that the sound, song, or word that one is hearing is an
external manifestation of a similar note turning in the bloodstream,
marrow, guts and glow. The strange placement of a me in a body
and the seashells that press their sounds against our hearing.
Thanks for the sons you gave me. I don’t mind the other drivers
saw me crying. It’s a good time to stop breathing
It’s good to hear the bells when the winds or lost men wake them.
It’s a good silence to be smothered under.
It’s a good pulse in the vein and breath in the lung to hum until
the drummer and chorus are thunder and breeze
until the self is something to get out from underneath.
So much pattern for such a universe.
So much song to be scattered between.

© 2013 Michael Moriarty

The Big Windows Review 5 (Fall 2013)