Originally posted 10-12-2016.

If a window opens in a wall 
where there has never been a window

and you are standing there at that moment 
to see it open.

If a second or so
of your memory is lost,

and afterward
you cannot describe how it happened.

If no bricks appear to have been displaced
by the appearance of the window,

and no sound accompanied
the appearance of the window.

If you do not show amazement
or fear upon the opening of the new window,

and the opening seems to you
as perfect as the breathing of a newborn.

If you hold your own newborn up to the window
to let them see the moon,

and you look out the window
into a maze of walls, windows, and light from other moons.

If you recognize that none of the walls and windows
look anything like your own,

and the light from the other moons
changes you.

If you choose at that moment to call yourself
Mother of Moons,

though you have always been this;
if you are naming this for the first time,

then go out 
to seek other windowless walls

and stand in front of them 
until they change;

as every examined wall
becomes a window, 

as all the windows 
spring open at once,

you will know then how much turned
upon you taking hold of that given secret name.

So.

An odd moment: the transition
from fearing for the world
and all I know of it

to being obsessed with
the numbness in my hand
and why it hasn’t ended
with a good night’s sleep
and how hard it’s going to be 
to function until it’s gone…
if it goes…
if it goes…
at all.

Like a buzzard 
who has been wheeling
and seeking

the dead,

like a buzzard
spiraling in
slowly from a great height,

certain only of 
the fact of there being
something down there
that requires

greater attention;

how interesting,
this matter of 
how the fear 
that a short day ago
sang within me
in broad strokes

has shifted
to this small
humming

without missing
a note: the

same buzzard song
in a different arrangement.

If you had asked me
when I was young,
I would have said
(upon the end of my first
and what I thought would be
my last and only love)
that my broken heart at least
gave me shards to throw
against every wall in town.

They made splendid noise
when hitting brick and stone,
even better when
I walked upon the crumbs
and crunched them into 
a clay-red dust with which
I stained every bar and
temporary bed I could find
for weeks and months after.

I got a little over it soon enough 
and said back then that I was
healed when I wasn’t at all,
but it was the right thing to say,
and it came true in time.

I must tell you
that it is different now, now
it has happened again and
I cannot say those foolish words
“broken heart” because now
my heart is so much weaker
than metaphor,
an aged and damaged muscle
full of scars and fat and bad motion.
I will not insult or weaken it by adding
this new desolation to its burden. Instead

I will call this a long howl of wind
as I try to move forward,
like the cry of a ghost
in my shirt pockets that appears
when I fumble past slips pf paper
that feel like they might have been
in her hands at some point;

I will call this a dimming of light
so subtle and so profound
that I re-imagine the color of pain,
seeing now instead of red everywhere
a gray fog that further blurs the dark
that’s already shoved its thumbs into my eyes
and leaves me sharply terrified
that I’ll never see a way past this,
that I am too old to do more
than grind it out from here,
day upon night upon day;

only letting go when,
spent at last,
spoiled for the future,
I am only left with her face,
voice, name, touch, and breath,

and nothing of myself,
nothing.

When they ask

what do you do for a living

it is understood that the question
is about money
and that they say

what do you do for a living
instead of saying 
justify to me how you stay above ground

They never intend the sentence
to be heard 
with a word like
God or 
glow or 
love
at the end

Imagine if the sterile greeting
instead customarily meant

what do you do for a living glow
or
what do you do for a living connection to all other beings
or
what do you do for a living love

Or if it became known
as a traditional absurdity
meant strictly to break the ice at gatherings

as in

what do you do for a living lobster
or 
what do you do for a living return
to those thrilling days of yesteryear

In your head now
is the germ of an idea

To respond now and then

What do you do for a living…what?

They will laugh and seem 
nonplussed but

one day it may be
that one will look into your eyes
at the close of the odd exchange
and nod and say

indeed…that is a good question indeed…

and you watch
I promise it will happen
You watch

Both of you will feel at once
the world shaking
as it waits for the answer

I soften
in animal space.

Not much; I think
I am already softer than 
most people can see — 
and harder too, in ways
I do not let them see.

Whether in close quarters with
a young cat or an old dog,
or with joy-spasm ferrets
of any age; when I am

in the near space of something
large — a horse, or one perhaps far
from its natural home, a giraffe
or the odd country fair llama;

even when I come upon
(with what I admit may seem
a frightened side step)
a flash of snake or blur of
unknown wild mammal,

this righteous shell I wear
in human company 
shivers and dissolves a bit
in an inward shower
of glad tears

as I witness and bow
to the presence of life
without opinions, life beyond
right or wrong,
God-talk or God-war,
complexities
of love and hate;

in animal space
I soften,
become

more being than 
human being.