After Henry Gray

Kath – 4.14.12

we are born small
trembling creatures, arms strewn
out, mouths open wide with grief and lost –
the body heat, the warmth
of connection, abstraction, the soft
th-thump of mother's heart, the
gentle hum of blood

and we are fragile, in each miracle glory
of birth and wet and cells' collision
we are one with the womb when we first exist
and we spend our lives searching, hunting, learning
the way that bodies fit together, the way
life is conceived, to learn of soft lines
and gentle sighs
and a moan caught in mouths, and

just think, the entirety
of a mind is three pounds –
you can press fingers into each soft fold
the fear and fury, ideas, the sparks of
lovelifecuriosity, breathewantneed
the way we are fragile in each other's arms
and gasping for connection