Spaces I

I am Späces The poet's muse And I bring something old And something new The spirit of the word am I And I've existed in all places And all times Filling the gaps The empty spaces in between What we say and mean Recognize my face? Familiar, the cast of my eye? Many faces have I All spaces to fill And voices too The lowest and the high The light on neck and on my wrist Like perfume is Filling up this space Or maybe a stage light twist Sweeping these boards These empty, empty boards I will more Filling up this space All history is a metaphor Vile word that! Metaphor What for? Yet metaphor it is An arcing, ranging beam Upon whose plinth I sit Poets & priests foretell The common bond between all things How the grandest designs are writ In the meanest things Patterns repeat, expand, breathe out Until they are full blown And then no more Recede & quite fade into oblivion Or at least a scale which we note not And that's my job The tiniest atom, the galaxy is, if only in model The same force which makes it and the forest primeval Makes us too And therefore is beauty but a reflection of that recognition A mirror unto ourselves, both fair & fell Which once was lost Cities rise and fall, armies amass and disperse Family fortunes have their uséd patterns too Each one a metaphor for the other A children's toy from Russia Matryosha doll you know so well Many painted, self-containéd shells Crack open the large, therein the smaller lies Same face, same charming peasant red cheeks And again & again There is no heart. The heart is the pattern itself And thus are we all but shells Nay, less than shells, for did you know Seven times each cell's replaced within your life? That's seven new bodies -- more or less More in childhood, fewer with time The brain less so for thence proceeds the pattern Each cell has a memory of all its former lives Tending to which, like a magnet, it will return Our body's but a beggar's coat A patchwork hand-me-down Bound by a silvery thread of life Or a mere funnel for food and water Food goes in, serves its seven-year sentence Released from the cell is expelled You are pinching earth, water, and a plan Nothing more (Continued in Part 2)