Gnostic

I have a soul, I know it, have always

recognized it there within

me like a luminous ball in the dark

between my heart

and my liver, shifting

around under my ribs,

expressing itself sometimes

where my ribcage closes

just beneath the skin, a pushing

outward of something song-like, light-like

that could almost lift me

up and out of myself through myself

knowing everything I know and much more.

Fear—extreme fear—was part of it,

and something eons beyond

excitement, a certainty

that the body was only a beginning.

It was what I knew childhood

was for, to live close

to this, to sense it often, daily,

not to seek it—because

I was terrified of it, correctly—

but to accept it; it was

obvious, undeniable, like rain

or the hard floor of the house

if I tripped and fell.

I say this now, surely,

with a kind of nostalgia, with longing.

Life is much more literal

thirty years later. Transcendence

is mostly replacing one screen with another.

All light is fairly dim. There is nothing

to frighten me but death and debt.

And yet, that other, better terror

still rings—I hear it—between

and beneath these words.

Why else am I writing them?