The Gate of Vitality

Every stream on earth has a source, and every plant has a root.
         -Li Zhongzi, A Primer of Medical Objectives



if you walk far enough along a path
you'll come to your soul mirrored back  
       a reflection of time moving

        explosion of sky's rapture     we catalogued  
    all directions, i have callings by name and callings by sound
       so we warble, look a mourning is a type of flower, a petalling folded down

      sweet submersion this stone reached, grappled root first back into skin
 then your face, then your pupil, i control the light, she whispered,
                                               bridge after the second chorus
 and cull up swirl we tack on truth, the outline of any body darkens
    becomes hard to edge its nightness, could you sit double exposed
         a wide arc: look, a whole tree pictured in the water's pooling
              the way our arms cross back and forth blocking the stars
     shouldered the dead crossing and they were light as secrets
       
           i could have loosened my grip
                                                            all of now
                       was a lesson in how receiving love is a let down

                                                [of control]
 
     & has little to do with what we give
                    or what we give is no reciprocity of what we let in

           
             walk over that falling down, round counter portal the sky on fire
   & you,
                      a fast fish called desire ::    it is hard to touch a memory

close eyes to dream as pages on the calendar turned down mark i have...
   i am still        going to ruin    our mother sights the obvious matter of being ::
     (em)bodied   & thebliss     is what they hold us to     (let me assure...)
                              you can't have this experience. and not have this experience.

 you have to step through the gate. there is a threshing. of waiting, and resistance.
there is a shushing. of our own suffering, i would you lay down, call me by name
 sprout of life / i have always recorded

 am recording.         i met myself on a bridge.
                                i met you on a bridge.
                                i was alone on the bridge.
                                i was inside the universe on the bridge.
                                i know how long we stood
                                            we have always been here. singing.


blood has an urge to mate :: wings held back ::
                            i collected truth in the branching ::

 what creates the body can kill the body :: for decades, that is what i knew of love
          doubled like a taking flight from the midsection.
          two ears nestled inside me, listen.
the igniting spark between the kidneys :: source of the
 triple burner ::   would you slow me
           
                      toscrape/clean/ emptied of hardness

sound held so long no silence can keep.  here's
the thread whistled to the center,
it's always been just a walking with one another,
occasionally, a fire flares and by that warmth
we recall this caving/  we caught both light and shadow.
          it's where we told them into being
     
                           starting, once upon a time....