Author: Michael Angelo

Once, while sitting on a field,
I looked inside.

I looked inside
myself,

and saw Winter.
I saw hills,
towering white crystals.
I saw children
rolling down mounds of pearl pillows
and leaving angels on the paths.

I looked inside,
I did,

and saw Spring.
I saw gardens,
fluttering daffodils of all colors,
pastel wings in blue winds.
I saw lips
pressed and blended in nectary swirls.

I looked inside,
deep deep inside,

and saw Summer.
I saw heat and curling sea waves.
I saw nude bodies, anxious and excited,
sweating as they treaded foreign shores.

I looked inside,
truly inside,

and saw Fall.
I saw fragments of branches and bark,
of bones and skin.
I saw layers of leaves,
orange and yellow, bundled
and alive like phoenix fire.

I looked inside,
inside

myself,
lower,
further,
than ever before.

There were whales singing,
and I was the music
and the current it rode
as it traveled ever inwards
into greater and greater
regions unknown.

I vibrated through the core of the Earth,
became its amber heart,
and then pulsed
though innumerable ancient skeletal forms.

I quaked through crust,
dug through worm warm soil—
I broke
though the surface and crawled
up cords of new trees, brushing my nerves
along knots of bark and vines.

At their tops, I flared my nostrils
and took in the air, feral and wild.

Wood crunch beneath,
my claws razor ready
as I pounced

and in my jaws caught
myself.

—small and trembling—
Red terror tore through my ribs,
and I became the explosion
of blood and chemicals.

There was pain
and then

it faded—

the World, and light,
and even darkness too…

Then, I looked inside,

and through tunnels pregnant
with salt flesh and sweet honey,
I rose, feather light.

I had no eyes,
no nose,
no ears,
no tongue,
no skin, and yet

my senses beamed
beamed,

out into darkness,
far beyond space and time.

I became incandescent,
every particle alive
with feeling.

On every surface I touched,
I began soft and nebulous.
Then, solid and outlined.
Until, out of countless shells, emerged
my face.

I was bathed
in mineral scents, in soil and decay,
and the cool caress of water
poured along my lips, pure and clean.

I drank
and drank,
until my thirst compelled my arms
to tear through seas and mountains,
through hell and heaven, until, finally,
I sprouted.

Back I was,
on a bright open field, embraced
by white rays humming my name,

A name that has been,
that is,
and will forever be.

I will sit in the sun and write a poem,
sit right next to the shed leaf; in my hand
I shall take it, hold it up
and reflect the sun’s light onto you, onto bee,

onto planes cutting across sky,
carrying dreams across sea. I will sit
where I am sitting,
at the center of you and me,
at the core of the heart of the earth
and of the dusty things that rise from its depths:

the flowers that whisper their pollen
over hills and atop graves,
over soldiers and atop war,
over love and into naked sex
and violence splayed.

Each word I will write
will be an unerasable mark, a star of a star
wrapped in the darkness of space. Infinite
will be its song. Silent
its effect, but the waterfalls roaring
will draw from its darkness their breath.

I will draw from you what you draw from day,
experience in the manner of matter turned haze:
the prick of a thorn, the split of the flesh,
the soft bubbled blush
of a pulsing bead bled.

All is droplet and cloud,
and everywhere your name will slicken
streets and stones with the echo of your birth.

Hear it in the valleys! Hear it in the veins!
Hear it in the songs of heroes,
the mourner’s refrain.

I will honor you as you honor me,
as the world turns and sun blazes;

I will
sit right here, a poem
next to a leaf.