26 June 2007 | Vol. 7, No. 2

Eternity of the Sentence

by LAYNIE BROWNE

i.

Today is eleven days, which are one week and four days, of the Omer.

Because he has no arrow he uses his body as a bow,

laying back and pressing his toes against string.

This morning the boys are peeing together. Jacob steps closer to kiss his brother's cheek.

Benjamin steps away, irritated, pees all over the bathroom floor.

I should write to you more briefly, you of the many busy

and valuable concentrated forms.

I am drawn and can only resist so long.

making myself the impetus to fly.

If you love the sky as you become vastness, blue is no longer

a color separate from expanse. You have only to remember

to enter this aerial sanctuary.

I should be sorry to transport myself so carelessly.

Yet I am too shy and mistake myself any other way

for the speed which compels me to ask.

Do I forgive myself the questions I become?

ii.

Mostly when I enter is intense pleasure as if someone

were holding a burning herb almost touching the third eye.

In what sense are these devices irrelevant to an imageless being,

to dropping the pebble of thought? If sensation itself is a pleasure

which comes with asking is it incorrect to cultivate such light?

To recall the infinite space behind the eyes.

To avoid stepping upon the sacred

Is this the task to be imagined by the celebrant

From this interior where even silence skips

I rephrase my questions as if they were children

Is there a word for the invisible emanations which visit the quieted form?

Do the four worlds move in the direction of a core interior?

Are the four directions found through stillness and through movement?

Is the central channel of the nervous system ascending to crown

as well as descending to a dream below the ground?

Is the movement up, down and across the ladder we speak of?

And when are we to know in which direction we are moving?

My inclination is to insist upon your nearness.

Is your body one question amid a garden of questions?

Do you look up and see we do inhabit a garden?