WHISPERS
Have you ever
tried to
slide into
the heaven of sensation and met
you know not what
resistance but it
held you back? have you ever
turned on your shoulder
helplessly, facing
the white moon, crying
let me in? have you dared to count
the months as they pass and the years
while you imagined pleasure,
shining like honey, locked in some
secret tree? have you dared to feel
the isolation gathering
intolerably and recognized
what kinds of explosions can follow
from an intolerable condition? have you
walked out in the mornings
wherever you are in the world to consider
all those gleaming and reasonless lives
that flow outward and outward, easily, to the last
moment the bulbs of their lungs,
their bones and their appetites,
can carry them? oh, have you
looked wistfully into
the flushed bodies of the flowers? have you stood
staring out over the swamps, the swirling rivers
where the birds like tossing fires
flash through the trees, their bodies
exchanging a certain happiness
in the sleek, amazing
humdrum of nature's design--
blood's heaven, sprit's haven, to which
you cannot belong?