So busy watching my feet
move over the small stones,
dried leaves, paths of ants,
it is a long time before
I see the birds.
*
What is it I am circling?
What is this longing
to name it?
*
The slats of shadow
and light only look
like prisons.
We slide through the bars
like song.
*
The bell does not ring
when we call it bell. It rings
with the playing of it.
*
And what is playing me,
this too-solid bell of a
flesh called woman,
Hollow me, I am
diligently practicing
my one note
in the symphony.
*
All these obstacles,
and still
the unspiraling line.
“We slide through the bars like song.”
¡Ay! ¡Lo magnífico!! What a brilliant word choice of, “bars.”
🙂
orbiting and unspiraling while doing so – yes, please.
I like how this be starts, the distraction that sends your eyes off your feet and up toward the birds. That moment sets the poem for me, I see those birds in every orbit, either by design or by song.
Thanks for that vision of it …