Masks of Origin

Listen, and I will whisper in your ear. Perhaps earth-shattering events happen every day around you, more or less invisibly, as you brush past in your haste to buy a donut. A catastrophe that occurred in 9800 BC is only just now informing you of the whereabouts of your heart. After so much time it has decided to return, again to advocate for its role as the seat of true intelligence. If you do not stop the world, for just a moment, to talk to the stranger standing next to you, you may have thrown away your one and only chance to meet that significant Other. But where was the music of the occluded sphere hiding, and why did love’s messengers take so long to appear? No doubt you are bad.

From “The Goddess as Active Listener”—one of 28 death-defying acts of poetry to be published in Masks of Origin, by Brian George. (Read the full story here.)