the first thing I loved

Way, way back to 1991 - with this one; from the pictured Chase Twichell collection ...

... such a powerful poem:


A Minor Crush of Cells

I thought that the earth
would be the last thing I loved,
the first and the last,

but there were many loves beyond it,

things I did not at first
know that I loved.

Children for example,
though they no longer had much gravity,

would come sometimes
out onto the dusty, twilit sidewalks
to play their eternal games.

I remember the chalk’s soft scrapping.

It’s not nostalgia, this hybrid sadness,
not the fragile boat that rides

the swift indwelling currents
into worlds that exclude
the loved things from each previous world,

though like nostalgia its halves
are always enemies, in this case
sex and death.

I look up into the night’s faint green,
up into the pierced smoke of heaven,
and am for a moment

nothing but a minor crush of cells,

a bit of human substance
playful in imaginary forms.

Gravity draws down to me a halo
whipped up of holy dust

or dust from outer space:
dim chalk of moonlight, phosphor,

youth in the eyes of my former selves.

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Chase Twichell (1950 - )

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