Sensation

If I could lose the weight of my arms
The warmth on my shoulders
The feeling of the beach molded by my back.
The whistling of the embankment’s
whittling sands 
and sloshing gusts of wind that slide over my skin
like sterling feathers.

I thought I could take myself out of the action 
of listening
if I could lose the sounds.
If their resonance never reached me.

I tried to lose the feeling of myself;
The diligence of physical attentiveness.
I tried to become something otherworldly
and to be the world.
To encompass a spirit of something beyond my bounds.
To feel a fluid infinity
without myself a part.

I tried to surpass myself.
I thought to cross into the natural world
was not to observe, 
but to become.  
But it is not a crossing.
Not a leaving of yourself,
but a coming home.

I, twisted limbs.
Pose delicately in half sleep
for the sea.
I speculate,
scrutinize,
search for descriptions of the waves.
The shades of each underbelly.
The foam over each fold
as the water rolls over itself ceaselessly.  
But the ease of its beauty
becomes mutilated by my human mind.
Overanalyzed.
The words I need
changing with the turn of every sky.

But this noticing,
this is always from the outside.  
How do I become the world
without losing the distinction of myself?
How do I pass inside nature’s soul
without leaving the humanness of mine?

I, a contorted body.
Too tangled for order,
yet too orderly.  
Too clean for the mess of dirt and slime and blood.
Too pained and raw.
Too used to death.

Too logical,
yet unreasonable.  
Unrecognizable
and known.  
We are led by despair and love
as if they are the same thing.
Heartache in red and black.
A numbness of terrific color;
focused. 

This is how we feel;
In opposites that become the same.  
I need not cancel my feeling
to join the realm of another.
I cannot,
for it is the intimacy of my attachment 
that at once unlatches me.

Copyright © Hanna Cochran | Year Posted 2021

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