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Chain Letter of the Soul
By Bill Holm
Copyright © 2009
New Religion
This morning no sound but the loud
breathing of the sea. Suppose that under
all that salt water lived the god
that humans have spent ten thousand years
trawling the heavens for.
We caught the wrong metaphor.
Real space is wet and underneath,
the church of shark and whale and cod.
The noise of those vast lungs
exhaling: the plain chanting of monkfish choirs.
Heaven’s not up but down, and hell
is to evaporate in air. Salvation,
to drown and breathe
forever with the sea.
Horses
Go stand by the fence.
Keep quiet. The horses will come –
thirty, forty of them,
however many live and dine there.
They will put their long, narrow noses
one or two at a time
over the fence to nuzzle you,
maybe nibble on your shirt
or suck your finger.
They are watching you
with full attention.
You look curious to them:
docile and harmless.
They want to touch you, pet you,
see what skin feels like.
Don’t disappoint them.
Tunnel
Entering a tunnel the first time
you operate on pure faith
that there’s another side.
Maybe the sign was just fooling…
Maybe it’s a trap. Maybe
that light is only a trick after which
the road falls a thousand feet
straight down into the sea.
Notice even rational humans,
like you, for instance, always breathe
a little easier after the road
continues through the mountain
uneventful, down the cliffside
toward what looks from here
like civilization, and maybe it is.