Alan Watts taught me, we are born out
of a world, not into it, eyes closed against
the blood and wreckage of the lives before.
Each soul among the others of the yard,
the bug, the grass, the lava as it hardens
into stone, whose name too is only passing
through. I have seen the dejected lay
a toy, a flower, a polaroid the gardener
leaves untouched, then sweeps, in time, away.
To see our first condition as not quite ours,
it takes the quiet gratitude of the dream
for the dreamless portion. It takes trust
in the forever strange, the gift of breath
unheard, the moment that you wake alone.
Bruce Bond is the author of 37 books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner, 2022), Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), Therapon (with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo, 2023),Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland, 2023), Lunette (Wishing Jewel Prize Editor’s Selection, Green Linden, 2024), The Dove of the Morning News (Test Site Poetry Award, U of NV, 2024), The Silent Conversation (Vern Rutsala Editor’s Selection, Cloudbank, 2025), and The Plural of Water (LSU, 2026).
12 poets 