The Longing

By Janet Smith Post

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Perhaps God sees us with double visage:
one face that’s written on His palms a
one-of-a-kind, with finger prints unmatched,
our other face formed from those who went before
as Levi was seen third generation
still unborn in the loins of Abraham,
Jacob, both man and nation, Israel,
and Rachel weeping for her children though
she lived a thousand, thousand years before.
Blood formed from before-blood that formed before,
a river flowing down and down again, 
with its breath, received here and leaving there
breath that bears the fruit of haunted longing.

Blood transfused with ghosted ancestors:
one child whose hand draws a likeness by
knowing-born; another whose hand writes 
a poem -- heard from unthought thoughts.

As Mozart’s “one note births another’s sound,”
as each night births the day that births the night
As sunflowers hold seeds from ancient ones
now coffers freshly born in golden-frocks
And all their morning faces, facing East
the unknown, unseen-pull from present-past.

All our fetus parts are formed from mother’s
mother, mother, and from and from, till
all the men are Adam, all the women Eve.

Is this, then, the source of lonely longing? 
Like the pigeons drawn by magnetic pull,
the poet line: “the needle in the mind,”
the orphan-heart that’s searching for its home?
Eden, the Hebrew name for Paradise,
the home we shared in Adam’s loins with God?

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Janet Smith Post is a poet, novelist and children's writer. She holds a Master's degree in English. Her most recent book is a poetry collection called Eyes of the Heart, Glimpses of the Holy.