“Spirit is What Matter Does” by Maria Berardi
Editor’s Note: The following poem was first published in the September 2022 issue of Bristlecone. It is published here with permission. –20B
“Spirit is what Matter Does”
– Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth
Ghost world, saint realm
won't steer this rickety boat I helm.
It is in the verb of it.
The matter that is the same thing as energy
at a certain moment at a certain speed,
a moment that leaves time, ceases.
It is in the oxymoron, constant change,
the only sure thing we know,
right back to those first amino acids combining,
self-replicating, a first miracle.
And it is in the awareness of being aware
and the strangeness of this,
what bug in the programming is that,
what gift, what difficulty,
we animals that know and know that we know,
tortuous, abundance,
benediction, a jest.
Our north star. A mess.
Our home,
we the guest.
About Maria Berardi
She/Her/Hers
Maria Berardi's poems have appeared online, in print, in university literary journals, meditation magazines, newspapers, and art galleries. Her first book, Cassandra Gifts, was published in 2013 by Turkey Buzzard Press, and she is working on her second, Pagan. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Her process is one of listening for transmissions and trying to catch them on paper before they dissipate: the glimpse, the complicated knowledge.