May 2023
Bio Note: I have a companion presence. It has always been that way. Maybe because I am an only child, and needed another self. In any case, I seem to be aware of this presence that seems to me to be the source of calm and all things that are durable and pleasing. Generally speaking, I am aware of this presence when I am well enough to consider its being. In other words, when I am not exhausted, hungry, angry, and so on. Lately, I've had to ask myself during my peaceful moments, what would I be without this companion, or for that matter, without the body dependent on so many other bodies, a mutual predation? How would that be? This poem, "In This World," takes up the 'collaboration' that seems to make presence itself possible. My latest title is Terminus, The Pastoral, an eco-fictional novella that carries some cover notes from Robert Wexelblatt--for whom I have an incalculable admiration both for his work which is original and powerful--but also for his humanity, itself an inspiration.
In This World
Things are born blind,
innocent infants alive
without arms, organs,
hearing, sight, deformed.
In this world
all living things exist
by consuming others,
animals are cursed of course,
the weak, the slow, the dumb,
are first, lamb and gazelle,
cats eat cubs, in this world,
slaughterhouse of the divine
even plants cry when removed
from stalks; cells go on defending
themselves from pests
and continue to convert light
even in grocery aisles,
in this world we dance and sing
the sublime, the ethereal, we are
in harmony only when full of living things.
©2023 Michael Gessner
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