John Biscello

It happens fast,

this life—

the first trembling chapter

of an impending sneeze,

the half-slitted stutter

of a lid’s ambition to wink—

We are, timewise,

less than these things

in the gaugeless cosmic scheme.

And yet beyond these words,

and the person who wrote them

(already he is dead

and gone)

there is love, as a force

and not a shove,

always love

which is not bound to a clock

or the stiff cult of metaphor,

and in the blink of a sneeze,

in the bated stutter of a nostril,

you are there,

breath knowing pure longing

as itself, in a marveled continuum

for migrant souls.