by David Kaufmann
We stare into an abyss
six handbreadths square
and wonder at the shallow, shallow fear
that keeps us there.
It is not the poets’ fear
of words unreached
or travels to the deepest sleep;
nor does the thinkers’ feint of distance
suspend sorrow or hold us in thrall:
the mountain of thought he stands on
is a mote in the hole of us all;
neither warriors we, who scan
a double-edged fear from haft and down
to the blunt tipped sword of life.
It is a nameless tear
we drop in the grave with the dust
It is the shadow time
that rhythms a thud on the wood
It is the push, scrape, throw of the shovel
as it shifts and resettles the dirt.
Let us hold, while we can,
the hand of sorrow and the hand of faith,
for one is borne in the other,
as fear is the shallow of love -
the abyss is the span of an angel
a soul on the other side of our soul:
in order to steer the narrows
to touch the ebb and the flow,
we must reach through the shallows, the shadows,
we must cling to the why and the woe:
tis silence that answers the question
and in silence we see what we know.