Moon of the Present Moment

Moon of the Present Moment

New Moon  November 13, 2023

is nothing ever enough? each of the unsaid feelings dissipate into white flowers at the flesh stalk’s head, dangling moments of a little perception around the hour the wind starts up & clouds go vanishing over western glories

for all of them, a eulogy about itching the things in our immediate field, our human tower of accrual, each of us going on a meandering course akin to the downward trend of canyons & ravines, birth marking the hands with streams carved in.

each of our trickles. each a pattern unto themselves. each ghost passing an opening with the slightest of breezes, exhaling dust through the just-so aperture within the impenetrable face.

each gesture probably misconstrued. each vision taken for ordinary confusion, each love light shrugged off as temporary state, each awakening followed by a deep sleep reifying ignorance.

taken together a lifetime of nothing suffices. count the times you remember listening to the rain fall on the shelter. if you have shelter, recall the warmth of the gift, how it favored more opening, how it loosened the tongue, quieting the mind, how kind the night became thereafter.

leave nothing unsaid in the pupil of your widest eye. sit in the whole center without edge, the ring on grandmother’s person, the smell of the kitchen, motor oil in the garage, recall the view from the backseat, passionate blur.

the sensations of being young and without money, how everything appeared before you in whatever direction you looked. for each descent into meaning, a wreath of great respect is offered.

the old poet in her chair in Paris, channels another voice, keeping her face soft, not an act for everyone but only for you, the reader, the dreamer, the one before her.

here in the small of the day with so little light but reflected, & all the food cooked & given away, the thousand egrets of the ironwood grove return filling the island with nothing, with nothing left unsaid.

Poem by Qayyum Johnson

Painting by Suiko Betsy McCall. Leave Nothing Unsaid in the Pupil of your Widest Eye, 2023. Ink on Yupo, 60×58″.