The Work It Takes!

The work it takes! –
to keep a full battalion of relation
up to Being: deploying nth degrees
of seeing, smelling, thinking,
hearing, dreaming, paying heed –
attending to the vagary –
the wish – the need –
employing opportunity – the seed
from which the psyche’s
propagations all derive –
essences of what it takes to be alive:

contriving to construct a sheltered hut –
a temporary architecture –
open windowed wall
and floor and ceiling wherein,
for a moment, you can harbor feeling –
recover from the fall and reeling
for a time: but just as soon
as you have climbed into the thing
and started to believe
in the delusion of a constancy,
it breaks into a monstrously abrupt

disruption: crumbling cliff – discord –
something pulls a rip cord –
and you spiral down to somewhere
new which turns into
where you have always been.
You’d like to think a sentient
and sublime serenity informs some
stillness at the core: from which
proceeds this mighty spin.
You wonder what in heaven
or in hell you’re in.

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