In One Psychotic Episode

Rock and vapor, stone and air,

Immobility and absence –

Form and dreams,

what’s real, what seems –

the anchor in the sea –

incontrovertible dichotomy

that’s licked at by an ambiguity

like a dispassionately nosy cat.

What to make of that.

What he made of that was everything.

In one psychotic episode he had supposed

that severing his finger to obtain the ring

was patently the only thing

to do. Anyone who’d really thought about it

had to take that point of view.

Imagining that every solitary thing

was a priori inaccessible

to every other.

Never knowing that they were

each other’s mother.

.