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Argument
My flesh and blood argue
with my breath. The orchid
on the sill, whose velvet-violet heads
turn away, pressed against the window,
gazing out at the natural world
in psychic intercourse, transmutes
energy as to a distant tribe.
The barn there
with its doors open, darkness
inside, like a drum’s, light streaming
between the boards
in discourse, the way the mind speaks
through the body, or the soul through
the seam with the mind, where wind
rushes through and stirs these witnesses—
the vocabulary of dust.
Note: "Psychic intercourse" is a phrase I borrow
from Susan Sontag, from her book On Photography
when she writes about Walt Whitman:
"Whitman preached empathy, concord in discord,
oneness in diversity. Psychic intercourse with
everything, everybody . . ." (p. 31)
On Photography, Picador Press, 1973
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