I went to the sea to find my soul
hoping that something small would assert itself against
such immensity, such endazzlement,
the sun’s path unrolling all the way to my feet –
and I went to the mountains to find my soul:
in the wide spaces that peaks make out of air
would it appear in a solitary echo?
and I went to the city to find my soul
to be lifted by the noise and lights, 
then into the forest for its deepened silence, maybe that
or the points of light coming in like stars would draw it forth,
and I got lost there looking for it, scarily lost –
and at last I travelled to a far-off land thinking its strangeness
and my aloneness could jolt me into discovery,
but I never found my soul until I 
swam through the black of the coldness, the cold of the oily blackness
laid down in layers of pond-green
under the sky’s pale height 
past interwoven reeds and bulrushes where a moorhen lurked,
not even thinking about my soul but gradually 
conscious of bearing it like a shrine
a reliquary inside me
the hot red of entrails suspended in my own suspension,
and I bore it precious in my slow procession of icy limbs 
rippling cloud into water
along the far end’s string of floats
then below the trees through a shipping lane of leaves – 
in the euphoria of cold, sure that my soul 
would neither freeze nor drown
but glow on in the pond’s pupillary blackness.