the dog barks

The Dog Barks

He sounds like the white of pearls ;

round, breathing light.

He circles the black square,

the loyal orbit of one half toward its other.

The dog needs the square to see itself.

Relating is how they remember balance.

Without the meeting, there is only drift.

“What calls itself balance in solitude

is only the echo of longing.”

The dog barks.

Only through relation can he find

the stillness within motion,

the quiet exists only because he makes sound.

“A center found in solitude is an illusion,

a mirror mistaking its reflection for the sky.”

The dog barks.

To insist on the solitary I

is to run from the dog,

to hide from the black square,

to deny the rhythm that calls one toward the other.

Loyalty is not submission,

but a turning toward what compels us.

The pearl and the night draw each other near.

Curiously.

Harmony is not found; it is practiced,

again and again, in a third body that holds them both:

the meeting place

between dark and light,

between self and other,

between dog and square.

“There is no I without the you that answers.”

A poem inspired by an installation Radu made in the courtyard. https://www.la-source.org/research-labs