“Rope”

Who was it who first believed

each strand of our experience

is coiled into the long ropes

of the brain, that no matter

how many dawns break their waves

of light over the eye, we manage

to hoard it, all of it, and if

only we could wire some charge

into the right place, we are there,

born across the frightened

sheets of a mother’s blood,

entire, having broken the water

of our denial, without the current

sweetness of memory and loss;

and to test our faith, we will live

our whole lives over, and burn

both ends of this fuse to the center,

remembering and not remembering,

and bearing in mind the difference,

and not bearing, until we come

to the moment the wire dreams

its own descent, that little

charge of pure illusion,

and its laying down of ropes–

who can blame us after all–

in the phantom ropes we are, we are.