Alcmaeon

Each star is a god to me.

Each whisper of the wind,
the sound of an angel’s voice.

I speak of the unseen,

the far side of the sky,
the dark side of the moon,
the roads where gods ride.

And I speak of living things:

the suckling child,
the sparrow singing to the sun,
all men who toil,
all women who labor.

Someone above me may see

everything clearly.
I can only judge whatever
from my vantage
is observed by my own eyes.

A god whose knowledge

is universal may be certain.
For a mortal like me,
whose sight is limited
to available particulars,
doubt is best.

Opposites are endless

and ever evidence themselves
in the play of detail
in the world I know.

There is no underlying
magic soup. There is no one
answer to the vagaries of nature—
abundance is self-renewing
and everlasting, always
an amplification of itself or
a reduction as time and tide decree.
Health is a balance
struck by the powers.
Disease is brought on
by peace dethroned.

We are what we experience.

There is no single system

to adopt, no secret to decipher.

A void inside each ear

allows an echo in the mind
to correspond to air’s movement.

By force of breath each nostril

extracts a scent for soul
to contemplate.

Mouth’s cauldron uses

the poker of the tongue
to prove the taste
of what we eat
is sour or sweet
to a hungry brain.

Touch is a mystery
I can’t explain.

A child is formed
inside the womb headfirst.

Thought is separate
from sensation.

Men are not animals.

Nerves’ network tethers

the instruments of sense
to the instrument of understanding
as indicated by my dissection
of what lies behind
a dead man’s eye.
Asleep I don’t bleed
as fast as when awake
for in the dark the brain
banks its furnace
and blood returns to the heart
from whence it is dispatched
back to my limbs
when I wake.

Daylight or starlight
I never ask:
which end—
which beginning?

There is no need for either

when your journey
is a circle.

To the degree
we mimic the movement
of the stars
we are immortal.

The soul has a circuit

like the sun or like the moon.
By that motion
we are made divine.

Self-moving things
have no choice
but to be everlasting.

We carry heaven
to our graves
in order to transform
ourselves to flame.

By that immolation
we reconcile creation.
Find a familiar entrance
implicit in each exit
and shed the husk
we thought we were
as seed to stem
returns to seed again.