O Blessèd Opposite!

Surely (at least when we got up this morning we were sure)

a rare duality we could rely on – as dependable as light and dark,

or lose and find – providing all the polished metal of an armature

of meaning into which we now relievedly might park our bootless

anxious systems of response – the breath and strife of “mind” –

was life and death. O blessèd opposite! One was not the other;

ergo each suggested what the other had to be. But suddenly,

from nowhere we could see, we heard – as raucous as the caw

of dawn-awakened birds: “life and death are only words.”

.