One Steady-Tacking Ship

from Homeworld 

By Don Domanski

this is the growing of things     birthing of skin
and bone stem      and leaf      this is planet
earth beneath snowlight and desert sand
this is the place to find human beings walking down
the street with their souls drifting just ahead of them
with their faces half-lit by their own eyes

this is where you find the bodied and unbodied
living and the dead     also apple seeds and moonfish
swimming by      with heartbeats like fingernails
pinching and releasing flesh      their minds turning
in their sockets once every hour

                              ~

... where God and the absence of God are interchangeable
where the prayer on the lips and the claw in the pulse
send the same message to the stars.

                              ~  

in this world every life is a grubstake and a courtship
with affections foraging and fretting beneath the sun’s heat
with rootings of pain running down deep into soil
with sorrows immaculate and tacking steadily ahead
        every grief transfixed on a breath
        every teardrop tigering through a vein