An Andalusian Tale

In the story of Hayy’ he learns love
when his mother, a gazelle, dies.
Stricken, he cuts her open and finds her
lungs inflating, deflating, and her heart
quivering from a steady pulse to spasms
that remind him of fish drowning in air--
their eyes fixed on nothing, their life
in water cut short by a change of atmosphere.
He decides he is not a deer, yet he feels loss
and he does not know what to call it:
It is different from the beating heart
and from the gathering and losing of breath
yet his heart races and he gasps for air.
and when he moves away from his deer mother
the feeling follows him from tree to river.
And when he tries sleep he wriggles when he
Is caught in dreams of her and his deer brothers--
Who do not feel what he feels and have moved on.
And so with all love, with this love for you:
It will not let me go, will not release me
even after a thousand deaths and journeys,