Not Soul

as greater than the sum

of what’s missing. We

all want our people back.

Not soul as bicycle

in the body’s hurricane.

Nor soul held hostage

in the cat-haunted alley

of my skull where anyone

can hear the wind

between pigeons.

Not soul as groom

to the bride of everything,

soul scribbled on

the highest leaf

of the tree in flames,

theory of soul etched

on a bee’s wing. Not soul

as the whole-

note hum of zero. Nothing

that personal.

Nor the sound they

made walking through

the house, first

communion, prefix

of distance, infinity

seen through a tire-

swing lens, total of all

prescriptions. I mean

the soul as sleep

when the best we

can do is dream

of them, who once lived

here, now clear

filament. Soul spun

from the vanishing.