Spiritus Vertiginis

SPIRITUS VERTIGINIS

The body is the tongue for the mute 

part of us, the part which knows it

takes more than a three-inch slice of meat

to speak the weight of what it knows. One night

when I was twelve I inexplicably became 

a prisoner to the upstairs bathroom, 

bleeding and crying but unable to stop wiping 

until absolutely certain I was clean.

It never came, and then I was up and down 

the stairs all night for months, certain

I had left the sink on or the refrigerator open, 

and it would be my fault whatever ruin 

the morning revealed. And if Carmel

were to die it was because I hadn't checked her bowl

twelve times that night, and if I went to hell 

it was because I hadn’t checked my soul 

twelve times that the night, and then 

a decade later how could I ask her to marry me when

I couldn’t be certain what love was? 

The doctors diagnosed it OCD as they were taught

to, which I now see as their best articulation 

of the body’s best articulation of a soul’s obsession 

with a certainty it can’t obtain. All this to say, 

hindsight helps to explain why on Thursday 

I felt first anchored then unmoored as we tottered 

about the yard, her little diaper swishing in October air,

hand around my finger. These days she points

at everything, or at least in the vicinity of everything, not quite 

able to manage the fine motor skills needed

to share for sure what's arrested her interest.

This time it was the string lights dangling

over the patio, or maybe something beyond 

them. Either way, she spent no time 

lamenting her inability to hold the light 

in her little fists, knowing so much is beyond 

her reach. Instead, she looked up as if to question

if I would verify what she was pointing to. I wanted to say  

“I believe in you, and isn’t that enough for today?"

as the world began to spin again.

Spiritus Vertiginus is either a demon

or a name of God, but either way its goal

is to get you so dizzy you fall

down and give up, lying as still and quiet

as Jairus' daughter. His faith, however small,

was enough to plant her firmly on earth again,

his hand steadying her in those dizzying

first steps, feet grounded another day.

Lord, might it work the other way?