———-—Is this the honor which man hath by being a little world, that he hath these
———-—earthquakes in himself…

we are points, less than, less than straight lines, less than
the sphere on which we drift backward through space, space, which we are
less than, and in time, less than that too, less than god, certainly, we are many dimensions
less than the idea of a superior being, than thought itself, than sickness, a certain vast
sickness, a vastness, enumerated on in the first lines of creation mythologies, we are
our spot in the universe, the line that draws us, torment to torment, self-inflected torment
or external, external though self-motivated torment, or nameless torment, or torments hidden,
tyrannies, iniquities, litanies of trespass, Donne’s sudden red waters,
bright fires from the sky, conquest, sickness, sickness, consumption of self,
of others, by self, by others, of the night blanket floating silent all around us, of the animals,
the animals in their tiny way, no larger, no tinier than our way, their tiny way of being
that draws them along as well, as further sub-points in this cosmic dream of Euclid
composed of earth’s hyperbolic rind also, dust, eroded, of refuse compassed nowhere,
of the dead skin, dead whale bodies floating to the bottom of the ocean, of salt, salt molecules,
of the temptation of prehistoric sea creatures toward their ancient identity of sin,
of our inability to steer out of, away from, past, gracefully toward, peacefully within
sin, its inevitable pallor over everything, the legs of grazing creatures, the frail wings
of metamorphosing ones, the shattering sickness that preludes death, that colors existence,
the shattering of earth, the oil and ash placed to save us, the words of benediction, the blessings
over the animals, the blessings on feast days, the blessings in ordinary time, the blessings
in sickness, the prayers for the preservation of nature, the soul therein, our soul, shattered,
our sense of self, our best self, our more than dust and ashes, our principal walking place,
our jetty stones letting out over the water where we can see even the reflection of the stars,
of ourselves, the eagles, the tall trees, and when viewed from far away it appears as though
we ourselves are walking upright across the surface of that water

 

 

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C. Henry Smith is a poet from West Texas. He is the author of the chapbooks Warren (Ghost City) and Twenty-Four Covers of a House on Fire (Finishing Line). @chenrysmith

 

 

 

 

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash