If the yearning

has passed

and I am no longer aghast in the rooms of my heart,

I’ll be going now.

 

If desire has ceased dripping

from solicitous lips,

the future is a yawning abyss,

a cave in jagged limestone teeth

with scars and stars and sparks spewing forth like, “I once believed

I’d be something good for those I love.”

If there is no more Lazarus

gesturing forward a cup of cool water to this little child,

no more ripe, full fruit hanging delicately

just atop this Tantalus’ nose,

then there will be no more striving.

 

Soul hallowed and stomach hollowed

by a hungry remnant of

Hope, sharpened by its primordial forms

to iron, scalpel point.

 

Quaint and dishonorable (everyone knows it),

the weaker species of expectation are indispensable in turning out The Survivor

 

Driven by the growling hollow,

I must turn that cave inside out:

thumbs pushing up under stalagmites into new mountains,

the dark, absurd depths become bluebird sky and

Emptiness Freedom.

I crave that cold, thin-aired, vast

Divinity, welling and overflowing satisfaction of the most elemental kind.

It can’t be seen, touched, identified –

only gulped down,

more space-to-be-filled noticed with every swallow.

 

So I do.

I nibble, notice,                                 chomp,                 masticate,

suck down every dribble that I can,

growing larger within, renovating all myself

because even though more space feels like lonely

I am persuaded it is more room for a weighty buoyancy to

move in, give birth, and repopulate the topography of my spirit.