The Contingent World

 

The radio in the house next door

duets with the one in the house

opposite. A dog whines low. Tonight

I think of the unendurable losses we sustain

as the price of living. How they sunder us irrevocably

from the past, from our previous selves: you were here then,

now you are gone. I was whole then; now I am riven.

 

How we carry them always within us, a low-grade fever that lies

quiescent for weeks and then flares up, reckoning angel, in

an innocent moment. A photo falls out of the pages of a

book, a song dreams out at me from a doorway and

I am losing you, them, all over again. You are not

here; I cannot be there. Anymore. Immutable,

implacable knowledge.

 

 

The wind bleeds into the night; the young Buddha walks out

from his sheltered palace into the world, a constellation

dies away and cannot be replaced. The things that live

are mirrors of the ones we grieve for. A dog barks:

I think of the beloved dog I no longer have – the

silk of his ears; the level weight of his gaze –

 

Other dogs bark back; now the radios intone the

news to each other in a low hum. Down the street,

through the night, across loss and change, connection thrills.

Through my losses am I imprinted more resolutely into the contingent

world, am I able to take more of it into me. Now the radios fall

silent, now the wind fades gently away; and now, rising like

a promise behind the clouds – almost a buddhist moon.