The Ancient Modern
To Thusness / Joshua Alan Sturgill
I never see the sunset.
Between us are a thousand walls.
But I know the Sun
as just outside my knowing,
as rising from a dream: ripe fruit,
dark bowl, blue cloth.
Not the lenses everywhere, but
someone Else brings the wine
before I know to need it,
as just outside my desiring.
I would pray to Light,
but gratitude is dispersed
by the thousand lenses between us
watching greedily without
eyes, without compassion.
Instead, I pray to the Invisible,
to the wine-giver, to must-be,
to Thusness — prayer as a cough
just outside my dying: awake,
gasping, as rising from a dream
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