As a kid I remember trying
to watch myself fall asleep.
Trying to observe that precise moment
when I was no longer there.

In college I read of medieval theologians
trying to imagine precisely
what made the you in heaven
really you and not just an exact copy.

Answer: the essential bone,
a small bit of your original body,
like the essential ten-year-old
trying to capture himself
just as he disappears.

Imagine me telling my philosophy professor
that the body is inside the mind,
not the other way around.

I’m not giving him welcome news.

Imagine me telling him that
the material world evolved from life.

Imagine me trying to tell anybody
that my heart is a string to heaven.

Imagine my trying to say
it was the dream that came first—
the bright, jewel-soaked dream—
and out of that came the dreamer.

 

 

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John Philip Johnson has had work in Southern Poetry Review, Rattle, Strange Horizons, Pedestal, Rust & Moth, and the American Life in Poetry column. He won a Pushcart Prize in 2021, and his comic book of graphic poetry, The Book of Fly, won an Elgin Award. www.johnphilipjohnson.com

 

 

Photo by Michal Balog on Unsplash