Neuro Logical
April 10, 2020 - David Need
Sleep was restless at that juncture between
lung and large intestine — an hour before the
dawn when the meridians
start back from the deep toward a surface —
I was thinking too much.
Outside, a moon in the west and
Jupiter — there seemed to be only one world and
the birds were starting;
I shut the door, had a bowl of yogurt and
blueberries — I made a map of this
though I didn’t want to find any of
it again — it’s just that you don’t know how
things become beautiful
but they do — so notes trace the
filaments, let’s say,
a possible incandescence.
The other worlds are not pretense but
hold off a bit — who knows why —
I go back to sleep as the day
comes on
a Good Friday I’ll climb up onto,
God’s love a thing I can’t say,
because, this way or that,
it’s nothing like
what makes sense.
Bio:
David Need lives in Durham NC and has taught Asian Religions and Religion and Literature there since 1997. He has published two collections of his own poetry and two of translations of Rilke. His current projects include translations of the poetry of Nelly Sachs; his academic writing has been on Rilke, Kerouac, Celan, Alice Notly, and Fanny Howe. His poetry has been published in Hambone, Talisman, Lana Turner and Heavy Feathers Review among others.