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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Author: Mary Waterfield

The Elusive One

I am talking to myself again.
Peopling the empty space in my heart.
I am wagging my finger saying,
now listen,
and like a child that’s all I say,
all I know.
How to say, now listen.

And then I realized I was not
the only one saying it.
The silence was saying it.
A picture entering the dimension
between it and me,
was saying it.
My hand was saying it
as I listened to the pain of an injury.
As it touched the separation
between me and the clouds.

An apple wanting to be kissed,
was saying it,
to be devoured.
Devour me.
And the world and everything in it
was saying, now listen,
and I heard a thousand poems at once,
clanks and groans,
and glass breaking.

Earthquakes deep inside the earth,
everything talking at once,
and I realized how much I could hear.
How well I listened.
How much of my higher intelligence
was listening,
as if the world needed my heart,
my eyes,
the touch of my body,
to be in one place,
to be in one time,
to have one dimension all its own.
To come to rest in its bed.