Only we can burn our own hearts

at the proper temperature.

A requirement of transgressions against

our individual consciousness. Yet,

it is human nature to act against

our will, our iron discipline, our firm

personal beliefs, even when we know.

There is a weakness not composed

of character, but built into the flesh

that desires sensation when

face to face with aging and death.

For eight hundred eighty-three straight mornings

I have constructed different goodbyes to you.

By the end of day my heart breaks again. The look

in your eyes as they vanished from what I’d always known

into dark holes gives me no rest. As if

a trapdoor suddenly opened to swallow you.

Your hand reached out and I grasped, but could not

hold whatever it is that animates from inside as it

fell from view. I was sure you hovered somewhere

in the body not hungry or thirsty, not in pain, but perhaps

comforted by your granddaughter whose face you stroked

only minutes before as she knelt at your side. Time

now for me to let go of the nothing I am holding,

the only answer I have to explain your absence.

She didn’t jump down

from her crouch atop

the three-foot ledge.

Long haired, lithe human

leapt straight out—

unfolded her legs simply to the ground,

continued forward in one motion;

head never-changing height.

Twelve years old, chasing

the errant bouncing ball.

Railroad cars are difficult to push

uphill especially

and with one’s father no less,

rolling through covered bridges

that lie hidden behind doors

like garages (that do not open

automatically). Behind

each door a mystery of terrain,

but, surprisingly, we have

the strength to do it

over and over again,

though there is nothing

to mark our progress,

just another door

and dark, deep weeds

or desert behind it, our cargo

in front of us, passengers

faceless and nameless.

The hulking load moving slowly

but steadily,

by sweat of our will

toward some, no doubt,

unspectacular destination.

a painting is not a picture of an experience,

it is an experience – Mark Rothko, 1959.

Nearly ten feet by nearly nine on the wall it comes at me like a night terror, three rectangular, disembodied, blurred, stacked horizontal bands of color; dark red, brown, and black pulsating inside an enormous purple stain. I yield. Not my body that shrinks from its advance, inside the corridors of my flesh a body of light turns to its side, raises an arm for shield and hunches on its

knees before the propelled vision. It’s just a painting on a white wall, lights of the gallery set low. I have seen other Rothko paintings. But this one grows… to engulf my soul. Yes, soul is the word I mean. I’ve doubted its existence, having no proof other than vague sensations in the solar plexus and this consciousness, which may only be the mind. This painting calls out my soul… fuck! Foreboding, heavy in my chest, makes it difficult to catch my breath. This threatens me. Not abstract, this is palpable, a plum hum of nightfall, Earth’s shadow circling the

globe always on the hunt for light. To devour safety in what can be seen is the onslaught of blindness under a moonless night, shadows grow thick, swallow luminosity from streets and yards of even the most cheerful neighborhoods. Silence dense in unlit alleys. This is the ancient feeling that beyond the cave-mouth fire, the darkness will eat me. My scream does not have the force to escape the black. Thankfully, a bright winter day when I stagger from the building. I survive, freighted and possibly damaged. The image continues to expand into the interior of my geometry. Nightfall fills the cracks, allows nothing to escape. Lock the door, flip the electric switch, but one cannot see into the darkness when bathed in the light, only when standing in shadow looking toward a shaft of it. I recoil from the looming shade, its dispassionate maw. I pray to again witness the break of day when hope rushes and fear recedes, genesis of edge.