The Way the Soul Moves

Not in space but through one’s life—
above the rumbling trucks at dawn
and down below footsteps leaving
no impression on the concrete walk to work;
Not clothed in subtleties of wardrobe,
not named by title, raised by rank;
under shakes and shingles not sheltered,
nor housed by stucco or aluminum;

No pocket can hold it quite so well
as the mind, though not a mind
calcified by calculation, for it cannot be figured
in the yield of an IRA, nor made to appear
through the magic of an interest rate;
Of accounts it prefers the narrative,
its currency the well-coined phrase—
favoring the circumlocutory, evading

the well-defined; and so we feel it
only as it slips away, like the fluttering shock
of blue jay vanishing among the trees,
like night and its gossamer of dream,
like love as fluid as a memory, like youth,
like the day, like life in this borrowed body
traveling through space for a space of time,
for such a little space of time.