Cardinal Points

The Beyond

.:. The Beyond It is there your whole life at your lips your fingertips waiting in the first light and breath you take blue slick wrapped in ribbons of blood arrived from a world within this one into this one this world beyond you always It was there before you when like some Cheyenne pressing his ear to the earth to hear what far off in the distance what across the wide prairie was coming your father into your mother's belly leaned his eyes in awe closed better to hear her heart and that tiny other heart beating beating his way The beyond back there lies ahead of you three long blocks up your street a green bank rising to the Santa Fe tracks where after the line of rattling freight cars passed around a curve out of sight your flattened dime shined 27 28 ragged face of a tramp waving taking the place of the cold perfect face of Miss Liberty now beyond reclamation It is past over yonder above the full moon moving into view sending its light forward and following into the dark circle your telescope describes on the endless heavens warm white edge of the moon the thigh of the first girl you lay by both of you untouched waiting for the other to begin beyond worry for the moment all that mattered before you What faces you now you see in the face of the old woman next door leaning on her cane descending the five steps to her back lawn to tend her perennial beds or pin her lingerie to the line You follow her motions windows of her house after dark flaming on then off as she makes her way to the bed she may never rise from her life whole beyond the parts you know She's close to the beyond the great beyond some say is no more than back black ashes of the body returning to the fire Believe otherwise It is more exceeding in degree any limit you approach It's the spirit in the corner of your eye racing from you calling you forward as you turn and turn and turn your whole life long chasing what's beyond reach like that blue wooden bird set outside on the white fence a wind toy turning this way and that in the breeze all bright wings spinning and dying as the wind gusts and dies getting nowhere fast stuck all summer under the fluid song mockingbirds sing down from the roof peaks before flying off over the horizon bound elsewhere bound beyond all hope or comprehension 29 ...