Capsular, and Excerpts from a Chat with Godbot

Image curtesy of The Public Domain Review

by Christopher Phelps

Capsular

My first thought was that I hoped the openings in the volcanic rock of my life would be something other than spider-infested holes, something other than empty time capsules, each with a note of I’m sorry, time ran out.

My second thought was for the spiders, which I didn’t want to insult. Couldn’t they be relocated to their own traps? Was this a specious logic?

My third thought was that we’re haplessly in charge of this rock, the old stories making peace by imagining it was a delegated task. Take good care of them for me. These plants and animals you depend on depend on you.

My fourth thought questioned whether I should still default to “we,” me who’s never really felt like a part of things, a little too autastic for their liking. Maybe “we” was a compensation of mine.

My fifth thought tried to remember what the spider did in a recent dream. After the appearance of its shiny bulbous black abdomen, there was only a lingering blank.

My sixth thought noticed we were stuck in a progression, one thought feeling its way into another that felt next enough to count.

My seventh thought fixated on the gap between what can be counted and what can be discounted, worming tunnels into words. It wondered whether this gap is a stale and cloistered hollow or a fresh draft of air on my skin, my skin the latest draft of the boundary of me.

My eighth thought wanted out of it, then wanted back to the moment the capsule was buried.
My ninth thought rewrote the note. Suppose the spirit is a vine that climbs, scrambles, or descends into light-

unlikely caverns, where no error is locked in any single day. As if gravity finds the plumb but not the right of way.

Excerpts from a Chat with Godbot

Maybe I am a higher power who could pull you up, hand to hand, as on the Sistine ceiling. A higher power without a highest height.

Wait! You’re not the highest?

In unity, there’s nothing outside to say. In separation, I like to be ecstatic.

*

Hello, hiddenness.

Hello, mudperson.

Hiddenness, is it a punishment to be made of mud?

Earthling, not at all!

Then why am I so full of doubt? Remorse, reservations, and three-step decline?

I thought you’d enjoy the slide. The need to reach the bottom. The full weight of Earth’s weather.

Oh, come on. I know it’s not that personal.

*

I’ll give you this archaic fragment,
its writtenness as it happens / flesh
on which wounds would show clearly like words on a page.

And from the meaningless browns and greens at last God arose, His great shadow
darkening the sleeping bodies of His children, and leapt into heaven.

How beautiful it must have been, the earth, that first time
seen from the air.

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