The Golden Egg

To fold the corners

of belief upon itself:

to be so wholly

pummeled you stand adjacent

to your own life: is to die

to it, and open

the flower of the beyond,

which is emptiness

surpassing measure or form.

That is all one needs to know.

In truth, I’ve never

known much about anything.

Once, by the harbor,

I heard a woman singing,

We had a good time, even

if that’s all it was.

After impact, you became

a feral creature,

crawling under leaves to die.

You told us you were dyeing

when, day after day,

you failed to emerge. We lied

to you, too. We said

this end was a beginning

when we knew it was an end.

See, the briars of

the past aren’t past, they’re buried.

In order to heal

you have to go home again,

to the place that makes you whole.

Thorns, blot out my sight.

(The eye is the first circle:

beginning, no end.)

The tolling bell strained to tell:

Before sewing, one must cut.