Out the panes of your eyes, through the windows of the building, you look and see the world in the open is of trees, and inside, of dreams, memories. The world is of musical tones that flow together and make you cry for no apparent reason; but the reasons are deep and have seeped through your skin, through your muscles and bones, into your bloodstream, and they have knocked on the door of your beating heart, like Jesus Christ (let It be), and demanded entry, but patiently. The reasons did not force their way in, but they sat there outside your sacred house or scared or scarred heart so persistently that you could do no other than let them in, and you didn’t even know you’d opened the door. And then you hear a song one day down the road, and you start clenching up, startled that you were open, getting tight and hot, and you cover your face with your hands, bury yourself into yourself, and start breathing hard because you feel tears coming and don’t know why they should or if they really will. And you’re in a public place. And you’re amazed and ashamed for the seeming abnormality of the event, you, sitting in the middle of the library. And you fold inward again, to the mind, to the page, as a way out of the situation. You begin to write it, what is finishing happening. And this was it. The words have sounded and silenced you. The door is ajar, but only slightly. The song was the moving melody, and certain lyrics you caught, that tripped on the edge of the door and fell inside the heart. Falling, praying, little girl, died, with me, sail around with me, good bye little woman, I’m gone.
You think, “Here is the song, people. Hear the song, people. Understand me, people.”
You think, “This is stupid, this is mushy, people. I am sorry but I have to share it, people.”
You think, “People?”
You see through the windows the gray sky and the evergreen dim underneath it—really, inside of the sky. The sky doesn’t just sit on top of the world, does it? The sky falls down and around all things on the earth. The evergreen is in the atmosphere.
You think of an animal small and cowering underneath the lowest boughs, the needles catching in its fur, and dirt under its claws as it tries to burrow into the ground.
You’ve only imagined it.
But you let it all stand,
let it be.
You feel that the animal is not meant for subterranean life. The animal struggles through more pain to burrow in than to stand atop the earth with pricking pine needles and fears of predators outside. The animal stops digging and pokes its head from the branches. The animal scans for danger.
All is calm.
