Animate Spirit

Animate Spirit

Luke Sawczak

Across the aisle I saw a child eating chili sauce
and gasping, venting his hot lungs,
and thought how strange

is the animate spirit that enters a newborn
and feels to the ends of fingertips
as if inside a living glove:
kicks within feet, draws
eyelid-blinds, lifts up the chest,
parts lips, tries rushing out again
only to find the essence
has caught somewhere inside.

Only air escapes and air returns,
blowing the bellows on the tiny spark
that grows into a fire in the mind:
cool bright or dark heat, no fuel or ash,
and you remove your sandals
catching glimpses through transparent skin.

That day on the train,
a spirit with a few years’ use
of miniature hands and voice
dabbed chili sauce on tongue
and swallowed, gasped, screeched,
giggled and then tasted more
the sheer delight of living
in the little clean-swept home,
fresh and new yet to the earth.

He was laughed at by his little sister
freely — even with joy and pride,
the young eternity of little souls.

Angels wonder at that spurt of laughter,
discern a little less than God,
guess that in it’s something
of the power of good or harm
that someday gives new life,
or takes or loses it—
life whose force and love
is not as sweet as childhood dreams;
and yet what is it to the young,
what if not chili on the tongue?

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Luke Sawczak
Poet & Teacher

Luke has been published in the Humber Literary Review and is set to appear in the Nonbinary Review and Spadina Literary Review.

Photography by Ludwig Favre