I am the world that turns no other.
I spin into the center as the center
turns and turns its way into to me.
Nothing moves. Nothing matters.
There’s nothing left we can do and
nothing is the hardest thing to do.

Even if we can’t make anything happen
we can still commune with the universe
as we walk between those lines
which breathe with the earth
and imitate the spiral of D.N.A.
and the Milky Way reaching to space.

We are like that: we can see,
and hear and feel but do nothing
yet somehow everything we do
most especially this time walking,
turning, spinning changes it all.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.