Silken Cord

A hollow runs up your spine

piercing the heart

of Andromeda,

threading the serpent coils

of Laniakea, dazzling silken 

cord of emptiness

that makes all creatures

quiver and beat

with a weightless kiss,

this whirling of atoms, minds, and stars

into something like a nest,

scraps of twig and berry twined

by a great winged mothering,

whose warm breath stirs

the deep, a ruffled softness
over the smooth blue egg

of the sky.

What is inside?

We only pretend to know anything.

Call it an ancient dawn

that has not yet broken,

holding in tiny seed cups

the wine of April.

Notice everywhere the

embryonic curve,

the curl of their little hands,

petals shaping themselves

in dreams

at the stamen’s tip,

the grey stuff in cocoons,

neither wing nor worm.

Or say these infant beams

gaze through all centers

from the mirror of your face

to the mirror of mine,

until our lips collide

in the ecstatic catastrophe

that is everywhere.

Look upward, look down.

To ascend is to fall

in all directions at once –

the teaching of the rose.

Water color by Marney Ward