Gift, 2
by J. Neil C. Garcia
Lost in the sea’s
unforgiving blue,
I seek you.
Before me
the day unscrolls
its naked scripture:
sun, vision’s burning field,
islands, faint presences
crumbling in the distance,
water, the fickle immensities
life is made
constant by.
And it strikes me
I love the sea
because it borders
this suffering world
and the next:
the soul, it is said,
travels in a boat
from a winding inland river,
homing clear-eyed
toward the ocean--
which is the bottomless
beyond.
And I know:
here, upon this beach,
wash the crushed remains
of what was once mortal:
bone and kelp,
driftwood and tentacle,
porous red coral--
keepsakes
life leaves behind
before
dissolving
back to brine.
I am home here, then,
whom the world
never loved,
and from its torn edges
I can almost see
it all end:
an onrushing tide,
a radiant sea-swell
sweeping away all appearance,
gentle eddies
whittling the self
till it is no longer
even sand.
I think of you
landlocked and lost
in another element--
your body.
The sea teaches me
love is a wish
not for safety
but for destruction.
I am not ashamed
to admit it:
I love you
the way water loves.
Which is to say
I wish the world
were through with you,
so you could return to me
ravaged, upon this shore:
a shell
held tight
inside my palm.
Showing posts with label J. Neil C. Garcia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label J. Neil C. Garcia. Show all posts
Mayonnaise by J. Neil C. Garcia (Poem)
Mayonnaise
by J. Neil C. Garcia
The principle of its thickness
is not found in the oil,
not in the whisking, however
loving that may be.
We know how everything
once began with the egg:
the purest littlest room
where life first took up residence.
There it fattened and rolled on its own
sweet sphere until God decided it was unnatural
for life to be rolling with no purpose forever.
Life must live outside itself.
And the egg cracked like a voice
rumbling in the great quiet emptiness,
when it suddenly happened:
light, a round golden yellow
started to stain bright surfaces
and where it did, life was.
But as I give my own wiry touch of it
with a whisk to an emulsion full of fat,
I remember that life
can only go so far, like mayonnaise -
it toughens to consistency when beaten,
but when allowed to be it breaks.
by J. Neil C. Garcia
The principle of its thickness
is not found in the oil,
not in the whisking, however
loving that may be.
We know how everything
once began with the egg:
the purest littlest room
where life first took up residence.
There it fattened and rolled on its own
sweet sphere until God decided it was unnatural
for life to be rolling with no purpose forever.
Life must live outside itself.
And the egg cracked like a voice
rumbling in the great quiet emptiness,
when it suddenly happened:
light, a round golden yellow
started to stain bright surfaces
and where it did, life was.
But as I give my own wiry touch of it
with a whisk to an emulsion full of fat,
I remember that life
can only go so far, like mayonnaise -
it toughens to consistency when beaten,
but when allowed to be it breaks.
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