ManicDDaily

All in the Head

There is a pain
that spots my brain;
I sometimes think of it
as a birthmark.

Only I have a birthmark; it spreads
the continent of Australia palely
over one thigh.

So not exactly
a birthmark, more akin
to the brindlng
of Gerard Manly Hopkins’
cows, God’s dappling–
except that a pox
comes more to mind.

I do not write
of a head-ache.
I write of pain
whose spread even the moon waxing gibbous, glorious,
through the black-veined climb of limb, through
the capillaries
of night-branched sky,
cannot stanch,
even as the brain observes, awed,
beauty, the wholly
good.

We cannot help
how we are made;
some of us with a burst heart lodged
in our foreheads,
a splaying mass that refuses to stay down under
even as we stand beneath
a Northern
light night sky,
both part of it
and not part,
some wrong-headed beating
beating
as if it had
caught wings,
as if it were a bird,
not heart, or part
of a bird.

We don’t like to speak
of these things, but how else are we
to make a space
where we
can see?

***************************
A draftish poem for Real Toads Tuesday Open Platform. Sorry for the length.  Also, the picture is not the one I have in my mind, but one I had on my computer; maybe will update if I get a better one.  As a process note, Gerard Manley Hopkins has a beautiful poem about pied (meaning spotted) beauty.