My eyes have seen what my hand did
- Robert Lowell

I keep thinking of a pearl -
looking at my life reflected on its surface
its translucence twirling backwards
through time and history into evolution
back through the creation to the beginning.

Ann calls this morning telling me about
the geese flying across the yard and the gates
I built about 13 years ago breaking apart.
I know that despite our divorce,
our own breaking apart,
that I must build her new ones.

I'm recovering from chemo-emobilization
to kill the tumors on my liver.
I had to delay the rebuilding of gates.
till my mind and body are together again.

The pearl of my dreams has been pulsing,
throbbing, getting vaster, historic, international
I am waking up screaming as fears erupt
from the darkness, as blood and death
and apocalypse are tearing their way
through my shields of body and self.

I want to come closer, closer to love
closer to light, to the union I once knew
to the perfection of the pearl.

© 2003 - Allen Cohen