From the Fence

there stands a wooden fence at the edge of conventional thought.
on this fence are carvings,
literature of pocket knives borne by those wandering near the abyss.

the exclamations carved therein would suggest
that beyond it,
passed the forbidden border
lies the face of god, or many gods,
or the seed from which our universe pushes upward.

so rare are the dispatches from that distance
from those whose blades frequent that fence
from the ones who walk endlessly to find and grip its rail
and cast their eyes upon the Great Falling Away,
that i find myself scouring for them,
raking the skin of my neighbors
hoping to find scratches from the high grass
or burns from the sun whose rage seems closer.

no unhumbled note from that edge survives
and so the sorting comes easy.

around the eyes, likely
you'll see it
a weighty gratitude

and so slowly,
in the gentle quiet with which you lift a stone on a string too weak,
you ask it forward, the quiet summoning
of the entry they wrote upon themselves
the chronicle to which they refer
when you ask them what they left in that fence,
what, in the distance, stilled them as they left and realized humanity.

it is a high challenge
they'll tell you
to recount exactly what it was they witnessed there.

i vomited inevitabilities i'd swallowed once
i learned a new north shining on all my paths
listened to the night that now spoke back
new and naked i did not conquer as much as i succombed

i must tell you,
when i climbed through the fence
and stepped toward that infinite Other
an ignorant index outstretched from my fist
i did not do it wholely
but in pieces
taking with me only whisps of the self i'd known
and slivers from the fence i gripped and let go.