The World's Body / AE Reiff

The World's Body

The spiritual did not come first

but the natural, and after that the spiritual.

I lay in bed

trying to get my breath,

slept a long hour or two before dawn,

gradually I became aware my body had risen

slightly from its sleeping form. This felt good so

I didn't move, went in and out of sleep several times.

I could hear differently then, wheezing groans, coughs

and forced breaths and sounds like long sonorous moans.

I was either asleep in this raised state hearing my own flesh

cry out in pain, or awake hearing the world's sound,

loud early in night which had since calmed down.

It was like a train or a moan the world cried out,

a patient deep in pain this resonant thing

with a mellow groan and travail.

I heard it snoring

in some detail.

I conclude from

this a spiritual world exists,

that its spiritual body lacks sense

and that something is terribly wrong

if it makes these sounds like an old folks

home. Back in flesh I didn't hear it again.

~~

AE Reiff

from The True Light that Lights, 2020

[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]

AE Reiff biography