This is the poem that doesn’t begin,
that knows no ending, just keeps rounding the bend
of middle, the bending and the rounding continuing ad infinitum,
as four-part harmony, long-winded, front-pew Baptist hymn
you learned as crack somewhere in your stained-glass memory of him
who keeps rounding the bend of you, knows no ending. Begin
where there is no beginning, where refrain neither breaks nor mends
what you once knew as discipline. The middle is where we start from—
or the beginning, the surging and receding bringing us back again
to continuum. And we shall know the place for the first time.