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On the Existence of the Soul
by Pattiann Rogers

How confident I am it is
there. Don’t I bring it, as if
it were enclosed in a fine
leather case, to particular places
solely for its own sake?
Haven’t I set it down before
the variegated canyon and
the undeviating bald salt dome?
Don’t I feed it on ivory calcium
and ruffled shell bellies,
shore boulders, on the sight
of the petrel motionless over
the sea, its splayed feet hanging?
Don’t I make sure it apprehends
the invisibly fine spray
more than once?

I have seen that it takes in
every detail I can manage
concerning the garden wall
and its borders. I have listed
for it the comings and goings
of one hundred species of insects
explicitly described. I have named
the chartreuse stripe and the
fimbriated antenna,
the bulbed thorax
and the multiple eye.
I have sketched the brilliant wings
of the trumpet vine and invented
new vocabularies describing the
interchanges between rocks
and their crevices, between the
holly lip and its concept of itself.

And if not for its sake, why
would I go out into the night alone
and stare deliberately straight up
into 15 billion years ago and more?

I have cherished it. I have named it.
By my own solicitations
I have proof of its presence.

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