Poetry by Invitation

Woman and the choir invisible
by Michelle Darnay

Our bodies : the vessel.

We carry the makings of earthly hosts,
Put forth to the world
Generations, generations
Of sadly singing souls
Our impregnated bodies,
The prison guards of essence.

Our cavity : the shell.

Within our wombs two cells unite,
Their nuclei meet, mingle and create
The murky burgeoning,
The original egg,
The tiny prison of a soul flower…

Our world : a purgatory.

Trapped spirits, captured in bodily form.
Ghostly energy striving to be free,
To expand toward the heavens,
To join the swell and wane,
The ever churning smokes :
The lifestream…

Our lives : momentum.

From beginning to end a surge
Of pain then relief,
Of pain then relief;
An ebb and flow,
From one pole to the other,
From there to naught and back again…

Our self: a spark.

The mysterious all
Shattered into morsels;
Ephemeral electricity,
Enlightened fluids
Animating not the vastness
But tiny specks of human dust…

Our existence : a reduction.