MEDITATION: CONFESSIONS, BOOK X
Touch is distraction. Light is distraction. Sound
when the source of vibration is not the sung
but song itself. How to fix the heart like a mosquito
in amber? How to isolate curls of incense
from the miasma? Large, larger, largest—therein
lies the mistake. As though the superlative
were
separable from the meager. As though the mind were
never rendered legible and sold in cheap stalls
along a wind-stippled river. As though there were
ever anything to sing about, in tavern or cathedral
except the prismatic I made audible in your throat.
THE LIGHT OUTSIDE THIS WINDOW IS NO LIGHT
6 a.m.—a promise of motion, a promise
to keep moving until something opens, though
nothing does nothing
this morning but a dull
glint at the bottom of consciousness, no hinge but
two brittle plates and a misshapen bolt
tossed among potsherds and votaries in the slow
friction of shifting sand and
the light outside
this window is no light, but water undissolved in air
the weather no weather, but a climate of rust and need
the river’s sluggish freight of leaves, and over that
like bald nerves, faint branches.
Virginia M. Heatter will be pursuing
an M.F.A. at Cornell University in the fall. Her work has recently appeared
or is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Literary Review,
32 Poems, FUGUE, Cranky, and has been reprinted online at Poetry
Daily.
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