Thursday, November 10, 2011

"In Particular" by Elena Karina Byrne

Recognition in the body
moves like a swarm of bees: you know all
over at once.  Your place
in history has not been betrayed
as you find what you really feel follows
no language: wild stir
of insects, flurry of birds, one bone
of the earth shows through night root
tightened within its ground.
Can we be hypnotized by the primitive?
I heard a tick, tick, tick
once, turned and stared with the light
thinking about nothing.
But I noticed a fine grain of sink wood
like waves, weaving, the real bending
of trees against wind, over-- how beautiful it was.
This is
what it is like before sudden disaster, before
the inhospitable truth:
our other brain, the one
which cannot speak, the one who sleeps incipient
on the job, walks the dog, erasure,
and gives in, hears
the tick, tick, tick, turns
toward it with the light
and makes us look--  whether for the first
or last time, we look. 

Copied from Poetry Daily, December 5
originally from The Flammable Bird

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