Bruce Beasley
May 2007

Light Nor Life Nor Love Nor Nature Nor Spirit Nor Semblance Nor Anything We Can Put Into Words

               (Meister Eckhart, on God)

As the ellipse
of a zero

is to nothing. As
the starfish's

five sucker-tips
are to the mussel's valves

they wrench open, as its
inverted, flung-

out stomach
is to the mussel's meat.

Or as a glacier to the hiss
and crumble of its calving.

As the foghorn
to the offing, no:

as the offing's
visibility, to the fog.

As cadence, to caesura.
Or insomnia

to obsessive dream.
As et cetera

to what's unmentioned,
incognito

to the name.  As the difference
to the subtracted-

from.  As loess
to sirocco,

bioluminescence
to the murk.

As arthritic
fingers to the etude, as 

bone-grind
to arthritis. As a saint's

gnawed jawbone
to the reliquary's

purple felt. As alienation
of affection

is to flesh of my flesh,
bone of my bones.

As breath to pleura. As
as is to as, I am to You, as

the clitoral
hood, to the tongue.

From The Corpse Flower:   New and Selected Poems (University of Washington Press, 2006).