Counting The Senses
By Melissa Kwasny
To sense the dead around us, in places where they are attached, or
to sense past lives within the present one. To sense the presence
of birds or animals on the roadside in the dark, or the moods of
birds or animals, let alone people. There are tribes who can orient,
even in the fog, naming the direction, east or west, that they are
facing. There is the ability to see through lies, to feel an enemy at
your back, to detect poison without taste, to dowse for water. You
are up before dawn, walking the shore, picking up broken bits of
plastic and shell. To sense in ever-refined levels the dissipating
cloud-layers of oneself, what Ezra Pound named an “aristocracy of
emotion.” In the spruce copse near the confluence, you left your
hair. Last night, we played Scrabble. My first word was divine. You
added an s to it, doubling your score. In this very room, fourteen
years ago, you turned over and found the lump. Your hand rose to
it, as if guided by a sense of love.
