48. Presence of Mind

what you saw | as a moment

what you spoke | from the thought

a particle of forgetting | somehow left

behind | you | and you remembered

the act of | forgetting

of | letting go

“freedom” | you thought

“from the past” | yet the past

rears up | the past reveals

unseals | dispenses and disperses

requires of you fealty | sans hope for return

it follows you | follows you

do you feel | its breath?

a moist warmth | against the nape?

when it closes in | on you

when it | closes its eyes

and thinks about | you

when it | remembers

do you | remember

it?

 

when you are | where you are

are you there? | do you

stare | so hard at your hands

you can see | your blood pulse?

do you live | within that way of

being you | that beingness

of being the entire presence of

yourself? | do you feel

the weight | of your littlest

finger | on your left hand?

or do you | practice

to be | the one who remembers this

without access | to the original

motions of your | body in

the space of space? | or will you

improvise your life | after the act

create an | heroic structure

to hold these | re-renderings

of what a life | could be

if that life | could be?

 

what you think | of the meeting

you have yet | to have

how you imagine | imagine forth

a reality | that may not come

that may not be | that will

disappoint | or maybe enrich

you | how we enjoy making

the world that | hasn’t happened

so we can happen it | instead

probability | cannot count

the ways we imagine | our own

futures | how we orchestrate

without music | not even a

sheet of scribbled notes | a life

worth experiencing | or one

to avoid | minds oscillating

between hope for good | and

expectation of | despair

until the day | our past and

present and future | become one