February 21, 2012

not hunger exactly

I’m thinking of the train hobbyist, showing me an early acquisition,
the way he held the car with such delicacy and reverence, fingers barely
touching the sides. And though it had been years since he’d begun his collection,
his whole body lifted into the story as if lit under by flames, passion clearly
marked on his pinking cheeks. And I remember how two nights before
I’d stayed up so late digging for words, and how each one, surfacing, married me
further in the larger poem my life was writing. There is something at the core
of each of us, the engine revving when we advance unapologetically toward joy.
It’s not hunger exactly, but some magnetic earth-pole drawing us to center,
a quiet room where our own love lies tender and eternal, calling us to enter.