Say a Soul Is Whatever the Body Is Not

How do you begin? How on earth
Do you end? How do you keep going?

In retrospect, one might advise,
Live so you’ll never be missed.

But that’s a useless wisecrack.
Reading of a survivor

The other day, and of all the misery
The survivor had been surrounded by,

It’s hard not to be impressed,
Simultaneously, by the news’ evidence

For the extraordinary frailty and equally
Extraordinary resilience of a body.

Flesh is soft, easily damaged. Injuries
And breakdowns are common.

But a body does not like to die.
Drag it to the point of death, and then

Watch it survive. How does it begin?
How does it end? How does it keep going?

There Is No Key

Daily, little emissaries
Short-circuit small loops in your thoughts,
And this is called anxiety

Or something similar. Will this
Or that minor catastrophe
Be endured, stopped, or avoided?

Behind them or woven through them
Lies chronic imagination.
It’s all memory, being used

As an adaptation, but one
That runs away with how things are
To create what will never be.

And what of the bigger monsters?
Every ancient mythology
Features terrors from caves or seas,

And warns, if monsters aren’t conquered
They must be tortured and punished
Eternally. The brain makes fear.

The brain makes fear, effectively.
Shoo away the emissaries.
The big monsters depend on small,

Cumulative habits thinking
The key is anticipation.
No. Float alone by a window.

Full Life Spilt

The idea of giving a creature a full life,
What is that? What’s the appropriate
Moral term for it? Is it patronizing?
Is it the core of all other kindly notions?

You find it often among other thoughts—
Watching some organism seem to savor
A moment you seemed to have enabled.
Let the cat out the door to explore. Rescue

The cricket that the cat caught in its jaws.
From small acts that you’re pleased
To consider mercies that you’ve yourself
Given, to lifelong commitments, even

The most enormous of those—parenting—
Have you done the most possible to give
This creature whose soul you've attended,
Whose life you've fed and shepherded

A full life, a good life, a rewarding life?
Hard to think so when you know you are
Dying. Not so bad for you, selfish you.
Nothing isn’t bad. Nothing’s no good.

If only you could get to nothing, without
Breaking your child’s full, rewarding life
On the way. And you ask yourself, in sort
Of a desperate way—this idea of giving

A creature a full life—What is that? What is
The appropriate moral terminology for it,
Especially if you fail to accomplish it?
Of all kindly emotions, was that the core?

But Masks Don’t Have Voices

A mask meaning
This isn’t you,
A postcard dropped
Indefinite

Numbers of years
Before it’s yours—
You picked it up
For the message—

Who was writing,
What the past had
To say and to
Communicate—

Or you picked it
To hide behind,
To substitute
Its voice for yours.

Seed Treasure

Carefully trowel away
The layers of soil and moss.

If you do not damage it
In the act of opening

The history around it,
The packaging of long lives,

The world to which it belongs,
You will discover treasure

Has come to nest in your hands.
Pandora had a sister,

And the marble jar that held
Her delicate, glittering,

Staggeringly valuable,
Tiny set of jewelry

Was itself a great wonder,
Carved from stone to such a fine

Thinness full of narrative
And incident, it ended

Translucent and frail as lace.
And what treasures did this jar

Of Pandora’s sister hold?
Among many small wonders,

The shimmering amulet
That, worn on the wrist, could shield

The wearer against any
Of all the many terrors

Hidden in Pandora’s Box.
That amulet had a name

Once, but now there is no word
Anyone remembers for

Magic extraordinary
Enough to protect a soul

From tragic ordinary
Sorrows one lives with to show

Solidarity with those
Who need seed treasure to grow.