From one light to another

A pebble knows its home is on its knees and with my heart like a dog
digging feverishly for a bone, I’m humming this tune for my sponsors.
The journey takes me from one light to another; it’s indeed a dark wood,
yet lamps hang from the trees like turquoise moons, and a centipede
with a broken neck can be roasted over coal providing drumsticks
not just for me, but for the forest’s entire extended family.
Just now there are clouds and I’m eating rice. A branch bows down
to my chopstick, recognizing at once its brother. From the heart of the seed
to its very fine mouth is a magical distance to travel. Though odd,
the melody I sing is merely a common fraction, a ditty of a sum
made from the body, the mind, and other sound parts. And now as day
comes to her end and the planets bloom like small campfires
across the wilderness of night, I believe time is nothing but another place
where people who are dead now once made love in the dirt.

—Karen Zusman

Originally published in the October/November 2002 issue of Boston Review