Darkness Passional

by Brian Sneeden

Is each turn in the ground
a mystery? What I grow reaffirms
an old trick, humus plus longing,
a formula for living in isolation
 
without resistance. Without forgiveness,
or praying for the body to open
at any other than its own speed.
Who else will winter in the eye of a crow?
 
This bedding of rods and black stems,
and absolution like a body of water
I do not know the name of, or the name
I wore when I sank to the bottom, the arcs
 
of my fingers a chalk smear darkening
in pulses. Who else enters when I’m
on my way to the other body, a vision
of rice field and black water and some
 
cloud-curious lightning like a fish’s
silver belly. Transmigratory. I don’t mean legumes,
or the way Pythagoras imagined the soul
folded upon itself like a library
 
in the umbilical protein of a bean’s
wrinkly bit. I already know we are edible
and whisper to each other while eating
the ones we did not name. I mean
 
this repeating field where the role play
of prey and hunter ad nauseums. How many times
was I the deer, my recurring volta
through undergrowth and mulch
 
continuing even now on someone’s screen.
If memory is just rented from the humus, then
when it’s my turn in the ground
go bury me in an acre of wind.

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