When
we are broadsided,
by
really the most dreadful news,
the moments
that frighten breath
so it tangles
itself among ribs,
pleads
don’t
send me go out there,
red
rain, rip tide!
Then
we counter like storm dancers,
intrepid commanding
deep gasps to release a hijacked
diaphragm, push out the coward breath -
feckless guinea hen,
let it
be a citizen of elsewhere.
And then allow no anxious intruders
to
hunker down, to take premise
that
suffering can homestead here –
no
rank chatter to menace the bright pump-house,
to bang about tongue and bellows.
Such moments, married to eternity,
dance with glaciers, typhoons, black holes.
And
death has never been a stranger,
maybe
alchemist, liberator, owl.
Even
so we live on, and again
like
bristle cone and cedar.
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