Monday

“Art Happens”: Beyond Us

Poem by Jennifer Holder

I feel through sunlight
because on the other side is a darkness
that yields to the presences of things.
Even these things yield to empty,
even these empties yield to space.
If love can be this big
that it takes form in
the sensations of you
I cannot fathom anything at all.

I see into your body,
to find my hands groping at
the limits.
If the ancients could give shapes to stars
I too can allow you skin,
bone, hair, and teeth.
I too can perceive familiarity
as it fades into all,
at all edges.

I hear you speaking
and it is water, drop for drop,
filling and forming a cavern’s
hidden features.
Hanging jewels, sights to behold,
but at these depths,
black receives everything.
There is just a drop that
goes on and on,
that reaches every crevice,
and never needs to surface.

Touching has never been skin to skin,
it is the shock of a flame coming to be.
We pass it to a fuse that
launches a deep space dream.
Atmospheres come and go,
with jarring rides and sweet coasts,
sleeps that are weightless and
buoyant on forever.

I think I catch your scent
I think I can taste you
and then I quickly know
that while in my grasp,
you are out of reach.
They are as your presence,
there and here always,
but the experience is like remembering
I was born one day.

And so I cry. I cry out for you as if from afar,
because you are so close
I cannot make heads or tails of this life,
and yet you have the power of gravity:
you keep me snuggled into all this,
as if anything could be ordinary.