Connotation Press: An Online Artifact: “Trying to Fathom the Akashic Record” March 2019

“Trying to Fathom the Akashic Record” March 2019 published in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact https://www.connotationpress.com/hoppenthaler-s-congeries/march-2019/3410-paula-colangelo-poetry

It vibrates on its own plane,

a universe of information in a library

of light––a savant in baggy overalls

recalling the history of the world.

I’d like to tap into it as Apollo’s priestess

ingested laurel leaves and vapor

through a chasm in the earth.

It lies behind the walls of dreams

that disappear when I shake

the hangover of sleep.

I’ll catch its scent.

Summon events of past lives the way

my husband picks up his Fender

and plays any lick he’s learned

since he was twelve.

Grievances assemble

through generations, a crowd

of raging vigilantes––

cancer gene, tendency

toward depression,

erratic heart.

Birth pretends to deliver us clean.

The squawking baby grows,

prevails, until

we begin again.

This is how another’s pain

once suffered in a well

too deep to measure

lives on in the bones of my body.