Just let one whit of me live, live and let it
haunt peaks and polar nights too hard
to reach with this idle hand or numb skull.
The hell with haunting the halls
this bag of bones once threw its weight around.
Let me go where the beautiful unwinds:
through Mozart concertos and great Vermeer’s
lit from within, golden means. Let me sail
to drowned Atlantis, needle the one Saharan
cloud, catch in the burned throat of Vesuvius.
Let me haunt the hydrogen nucleus,
filaments of Pleiades’ light, and the heart
of the barn swallow in flight, where all
restlessness comes to rest.
Copyright A.E. Stringer 2009
