I come to the edge of myself

 

Common Boneset

On this grey and cool final day of summer, here's a poem by my friend Jeff Hardin:

DARKLING

When I visit graves now, I don’t think
of loved ones lying there, out of view,

but of that verse saying absent
from the body, present with the Lord,

and sometimes I sing, not as though
someone can hear and not as

comfort, though I am comforted,
but because song is the soul’s longing—

and where am I, and who am I, if not
my soul in the presence of those

now absent I once called my own?
On a hillside named Mount Carmel

my people lay themselves beside each other,
farmers, housewives, scratches upon the dust.

When I go there—I don’t know why—
I always think of Keats’ nightingale,

whose song I had not heard when I
first read his poem, so, to hear it,

I imagined a hallowed ground I knew,
a place where I, too, was a darkling thing;

and its song soared above headstones
and tree tops out over a valley’s lone creek;

and often all I know is a drowsy numbness
nothing seems to salve, not the quiet of breath,

not the clouds banked by blue, not even
all my worthless, wordless prayers.

At least they’re mine and no one else’s.
Offering their bent and emptied phonemes

is how I come to the edge of myself,
a breath away, as always, from the afterlife.

A song, it seems, finds a path through
the heart. Joy weeps; weeping celebrates.

Breath is an ache, a sorrow, “sick for home.”

Oer Wout     September in my soul