FIRST LINE AFTER KEATS

Photo by Bhautik Patel on Unsplash. Image description: an intricate network of lightbulbs and branches modeled after brain neurons.

Small, busy brains lit up in busy flame

The burning of the unspent limbs astounds

What unknown weight consuming three wet pounds?

The portages of taste and smell and name.

And if the mind creates (as many claim)

where in the mind of God must we be found?

No alphabets or binaries we’ve crowned

or hidden vowels obscuring holy name. 

It will not be in paper or in stone

or static waves of always moving light

We call both star and ray by one name: sun

Perhaps not, then, in reliquary bone

or only real in holy sip and bite

but gathered in us, gathered, and begun.