Meeting Song

Painting by the Revig; freak of art.

Meeting Song (for Ivan Gold)

Jody speaks
and pours his heart out.
My heart,
which swims with knuckled things
and twisted wrenches
pours out
and empties.

How can that be?
We share one heart?
Eighteen feet away he sits,
a gesticulating black-haired doll
smaller than a monkey when –
imaginary arm outstretched -
he fits between imaginary thumb,
imaginary fingertip.
Even face to face
I think his eyes
would only squarely meet
my breastbone.

Jody vomits out his heart
and my heart,
flushes lots
and lots
and lots of garbage
down the old heartdrain.

Tim speaks now
and my head clears.
“My peace of mind is broke,”
he says,
and mine begins to mend.
What gives?
Here I find a mind
that shares its brokenness
and fear
with me,
that I may mend,
as other broken minds
shall mend
Tim’s.

Jane enters
and she sits,
compressed by space,
by all things pressed.
I see her weariness.
A fear-took glance
assures her
of a space.
“In the right place,”
she says
she is.

I crossed from that door,
too,
with (time teaches!)
one well-hid
face of fear
and weariness
that seemed abiding.
So strange!
To look at Jane
and smile
from face-at-rest a freedomness,
to face-oppressed,
approaching freedom.

Thump!
Creation’s shaggy head
with good,
good thumps
and scratch
behind its ears
the scratch it likes
and here in this room
share that grin
with love,
and power
and (sic!)
sound mind!

Rick Mobbs January 2008