Bodies, by John Campbell

When I sit in my room & the stars burn themselves out
& the celestial collides with the celestial somewhere
outside my window, I am reminded every time,

of how, at age two, Picasso learned to draw churches.
How they were shaped like breasts. How he made them
reach for heaven the same way Pavlov taught his dog

to love something that wasn’t there. Yearning.
That they never called it. But Ursa Major/Minor
call to each other & I never hear them right anyway

like once at a bar when a friend said look at them dancing there
as Zeppelin came on and I heard look at them dancing bears,
which caused, instead of a looking up, a half-thought

of slow dancing Kodiaks inside a dimly-lit high school gym
all full of ursine pining during the slow beginning
of Stairway to Heaven, which, of course, could not prevent

the awkward transition to bears dancing quickly
to the fast part of Stairway to Heaven. So let’s forget
about the man & woman, who plug & socket carelessly

into each other, too much lock & key. Let’s just stay
out there, pulled on by the inertia of poor footwork
that keeps us in orbit, clinging to the slow and the sweet

that keep us alive & spinning about ourselves.