Bloodroot Literary Magazine publishing poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction

Kirk Glaser
Holding
after the evening Dharma lesson

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,
or so he remembers reading.
He thinks how beauty opens itself
in the field of vision and sense—
the particular light and feel, for instance,
of hills receding in the sunlit morning mist,
or this insect song from the trees at dusk,
this rustling of leaves
just now, that suddenly washes through him
and becomes the rhythm of his flesh . . .
and is gone, leaving him in its wake
like an angel who closes her wings around herself
and vanishes, so that all that remains
is empty sky and his too solid self
standing there, alone,
or sinking, the mind desperate
for a way to hold what passes,
the body a hollow ache
where a moment before it dazzled in its hollowness,
in the woods’ song dancing
among the atoms of his flesh.
He turns and turns in the eddy of himself
looking for that moment’s branch to grasp
while the heart struggles
to beat in the next and the next
and says: listen to my song
under this ache you have created of me,
listen—beauty is change,
the only world you hold.

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