Pulsing

Blood.

 

The threshold through which

the four-fold passes,

becoming something other:

 

that which draws seemingly

incompatible power

to a unified conglomeration.

 

Containing all that it ought to contain,

needing nothing more than what it has,

self-sustaining, self-reliant, self itself,

and helpful only in the sense that it IS,

 

can that which was never meant to be explained

find an explanation in things as useless as words?

Can that which was meant for perpetual mystery

find explication in worthless language expression?

 

Having never before seen them in the wild,

in the last week I have seen two preying mantises.

The first was on a low mountainside,

and it was desperate that it shouldn’t be seen

by the likes of me and so struck a pose of perfect

stillness in the hopes that I’d move on.

The second was suspended four feet high,

trapped in the silken snare of some kind of spider

and struggling, hard, to get itself free.

And freely did it fall.

 

From freedom,

to struggling for freedom,

and again to freedom,

this is the life of the mind of man.