Genesis

It’s all in the history—
reason, the humid soul,
the dreaming and the haunting truth.
There is also wisdom
gone away, gone awry, gone with god.
And kindness, the eternal insufficiency.

With these things,
the world begins,
aspiring to completeness.
And we begin
yearning pursuit, our dramatic reach
seasoned by the classic,

the poke in the eye,
the stuttering tongue,
the stumble forward,
the puddling pratfall,
the heave and the hernia,
the ironic distance from self.

We flood by in our numbers,
living by codes of conduct, codes of honor,
codes of righteousness and faith,
leavened by repetitions,
by generations fresh from the old errors,
our moments of stunning forgiveness,

our exquisite caresses.