Not Hearing the Wood Thrush by Margaret Gibson

Author:Margaret Gibson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

I would like to describe the heart

as a first-century ode describes it—

split open, sending up flowers and fruits.

Heart is a seed pit that breaks open

in two directions, the root taking hold

in the earth, the stalk shooting off

into a field of milky stars,

which right now I can sense beneath

my pillow.

I’d like to describe the heart

as Solomon did, but here I am,

in the dream holding a newborn

who’s been split in two just below

the navel. I rush away from

the birthing room—the child is divided

but still lives, and I cradle her.

Thank you, I cry. I’m sorry. Forgive me.

And the dreaming mind

shifts to a deeply cut grave, the child

at the bottom of the dark pit

waving her little arms

as someone I call an oaf starts to shovel

dirt right onto the child—

the oaf doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Why doesn’t he pay attention?

The angel does.

Here she is, intimate

with spirit, fed by its insights. I try

to follow her breath as she breathes

in and out with the child. Look, she says,

I have also made your bed with sheets

as gold as the iris by the gate of the Infinite.

Fresh sheets and an old cloth from India—

anything torn has been patched

and stitched seamlessly together.

Now she gives me the also-mended

child.

How I love her small feet,

her knees, her thighs, her genitals.

I love her belly and nipple buds and lungs.

I love her arms and her hands, her eyes

and her ears, her mouth, and her mind.

Most of all I love her heart, which sings

like a struck bowl. The bowl is her cradle.

I am her cradle, her riverbed and orchard

and nest.

I would like to describe the heart

without words. I would like the dream

to open into a great light in which I am

neither cradle nor dark pit, neither angel

nor oaf nor child—but I’m standing now

at the border where one world dims

and another brightens; where what is called

waking up is the flowering of innate intention;

where, whether in garden solitude

or on the crowded streets of commerce,

inner and outer, when they meet, stand close,

their eyes open, and their mouths, touching tongues.

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