The Kingdom of the Living

Poem by Ron Clinton Smith 

We all live here between light and shadows

sleeping the walking dream of breath 

on the window glass.  We move about in 

mindless thought, some of us like the draft

that gently moves the open door, a thump

in the wall or behind my thoughts that aren’t 

my own.  We inhabit life in between the forms

and fissures.  We move as fluidly as light and

water and tell each other our stories, or remind 

each other that there’s no end to our undoing.

We find help in a moment, or a butterfly in the

yard, an angel moth battering against the sink 

light, a cardinal fluttering hard against the glass.

I hear your voice, not as a voice at all, but telling.

You crowd with me in the silent spaces and the 

others who’ve crossed here forever.  We stand

and move and breathe in the breeze-light of being

like sound speaking in another’s world, our own,

all of us in the kingdom of the living, in our own

guise and restless forms beating like lost febrile

hearts disembodied on a breeze, waving hello.