What could I have known of the easeful ways
of sliding through this world? A dew drop
descending the petal’s sloping splendour;
this same moon that rose over great beasts
and effervescing pools now rises
over your back’s prickling flesh and —
there is only so much water within us,
yet we are all pooling through our bodies,
pretending to be solid masses,
to be beings that matter, bodies
with obligations to other bodies.
For instance, death need not be
such a final, final thing. The days
heave along at a lazy pace.
If there were still leaves in this naked place
they would be still too, or at least listening
for the sighing tides of the Atlantic,
for the shuddering clouds’ fearsome report,
for the cyclic storms of trauma tracing
the exhausted courses of our ancestors,
for the chanting sky’s low hollow sound.
This poem is reprinted from Dr. George’s new poetry collection, Epiphaneia.