Into being.
What comes when the search ends
and every purposeful intent, busily
attentive toward some known,
to crack the ice of time, when
being itself seems to reach
a hand?
*
Denial, so smitten by the rough
hand of progress, will insist
that this is the axis of a turn,
but nothing has changed.
*
In this sunlit absence, here
is a space again, and it––
or I, or both, sighs
an audible breath,
the hush of shoreline,
a lapping this, and it
glimmers at the edge
of language.
A next attempt.
To stay in a body and stay porous,
To maintain devout involvement
with the shattering senses.
To salvage in a moment
some rescue for the next,
when this––attendant?
riddled with punctures
and verging brittle
is needing renewal
again.
Overheard, between chases.
There you go again, Alice, with your rabbit. What now?
Let me guess. It’s the old question about time, and
why you can’t see it, exactly, even as it leaves traces
everywhere while this visible abundance of space makes
a mystery of itself by including the atmosphere
with no evidence to label: this. It cuts you.
You should eat something. Here. Apple slice?
This, at least, is visible. Maybe also at most.
See the lilac, its leaning posture even in rest.
Now the oak, raining leaves.
Will love save any of it? I can’t tell you, Alice.
I am not laughing at you. Okay, a little. Here,
have another slice. I know you want to know
if it’s enough, but what are you counting:
acres? Dollars?
Look, only a machine will move in reverse.
Your question is moot, muted by necessity
of movement between stations and the
fact that you are still hoping for a chance
to erupt from this constellation of endings
into a singular, magnificent bloom.
How much in shadow.
To resist the floodlight’s patrolling glare, its demands and agendas, its attendant megaphone, in favor of a posture of listening, a touch whispered enough to elicit shivers of recognition. This earned denial of easy access. The elegant strength, to hold a posture possessed of substance so rich that it will be perennially misunderstood in this landscape, resisting the impulse to break the pose of perfect opacity––to correct, as the saying goes, by shedding some light.
How else could you photograph sound?
Here is the wise light of the dark surface, opening,
in praise of the unknown, unnamed
here is a deft grammar of mystery.
How much to be,
how much to be imagined
in these shadows.
Look, do not look,
but see.
***
Inspired by the work of Roy DeCarava.
Starry notes.
Consider the ancient star’s strange courage and this large man, reading. Watch this spirit storm the walls, the transparent body trying to translate its former substance.
Most poets are too late and too soon, with too much of the world to rush forward, pulling back, having nothing but this cry for the occasion, a flash of voice calling keep you to what goes and come to what will not.
***
Opening lines nod to this verse from William Carlos Williams: “It’s a strange courage/ you give me ancient star:/ Shine alone in the sunrise/ toward which you lend no part!” (“El Hombre,” 1917).
Metaphor and unknowns.
The space between fiction and nonfiction is often a no-man’s land, but the artists know it. Which is to say, they have become accustomed to its strangeness. Which is to say, accustomed to not claiming to know anything about a space so wild.
Now it is dense to the point of opacity, now translucent. Now deep dives under desert waves, now a barren ocean. Now the weather is a cat.
We asked one, what is your work about? When they were done laughing, they told us. It is about encounters with other people, they said. And water. Also, the search. For water, and for the others. In some places, both are elusive.
***
Inspiration: While considering the work of Ivan Vladislavić, I came across this article: “Diving the Reef: Water Metaphors in the Work of Ivan Vladislavić” and today’s post sprouted from my notes.
Bodies of work.
One advantage to poetry is that requires no heavy apparatus to carry around. Only this body, heavy enough when conscious. Unconscious, the form is dead weight, nearly impossible to move. And yet, when awakened to its fullest extent, nearly weightless. Here again is another advantage to the form. Of poetry, of the body.
Both remind. This is how it is possible to float, vertically tethered and horizontally webbed. In this poem, our feet in the earth may stir the unborn forest. In this poem, someone calls across the sea, Friend. Across and between each continent and each impossible divide.
Friend, this speaker calls. Don’t dismiss me to the murmuring masses you mean to float above. Friend, comes this voice, hold fast to me. These bodies, in the end, are all we may carry, and nothing but their given songs. Put up your sword, friend. Each must be held, or nothing holds. We are going to need both hands.
***
Inspired by the work of Tomas Tranströmer.
The volume of shadows.
Two trees, one real enough to be seen, another seen well enough to last the length of a dream. But neither can ever become real. This from Hannah Arendt, and now the alarm can’t wake me.
The sun is visible one moment and then less so in another but indicates nothing of sorrow or regret. It offers shadow. We see by the shadows. We measure them. Once, someone considered their lengths, prone to stretch and collapse, and asked, what do they mean? A decision was made. These mean Time.
Numbers were assigned to the lengths, etcetera, etcetera–– but some of us here, so often delayed as measured against a standard pace, retain some skepticism about these systems. Of their presumed inviolability, a separate matter from their usefulness.
Trees cast long shadows and are associated with knowledge and wisdom, and yet standard practice rejects the idea of arboreal sentience. In a world bent on speed, stillness so often gets mistaken for stupidity.
But only in stillness do certain questions show up. What is the length of the water on a face, bearing witness to the beginning or the end of a life? And the volume of this shadow of the solitary pilgrim on the long road in late afternoon?
I still don’t know. But speech is an act of making concessions. Consider the first lessons of any language not inherited. Standard practice begins with the basics for moving through a landscape: Hello. My name is. What time is it? It is an o’clock. How are you?
The last of these is the least amenable to explanatory language, wanting only touch and smell and song.
***
I came across Arendt’s words in an epigraph to Ann Lauterbach’s Spell. My italicized presentation in the opening lines is a paraphrase.
A video reading of this post appears here.
These dazzling portraits.
When the artist came to visit, we were moved by the shining colors in attendance.
We had questions. One was, how would you describe the world you are building?
There are all these characters, see? Part divine and part human, all in a state of transformation. During each metamorphosis, a being glows these wild colors. It’s magical.
Are these self-portraits?
A lot of them are, partly. Also, part fiction, part archetype.
Can you talk about your materials?
They are loaded. They appear to be surface-level decorations. And yet, the objects themselves emerge from grief. So many people were dying. I was thinking of memorials, how decorative they are. And then I had all these sequins, and was like, I know what to do with those!
Because people are so much, you know? All these glittering layers, and then when they are gone, you have all this extra sometimes, this overflowing sense of all you see, all you wanted to say, all that they were beyond the simple obit.
It wasn’t long after I started down this path that I was like, I am going to need a lot more sequins.
***
Inspired by the work of Devan Shimoyama. The title of this post comes from one of Shimoyama’s paintings.
And other notes.
Let’s rehearse, she told us. Lick this joy first, wherever you can find it. Even there, she said, at the bitter root. Especially there. Because this part will kill you, but this part will restore the dead. These are the same plant, child, do you hear me?
Survival demands distance from what kills you, and yet here is your life. To remind you how you will never get close enough. Only keep returning, back and back to that which makes you want to run.
Here is the cave of the dragon. Here is the belly of the whale. Here are the bowels of the ship, the depths of the sea, the strangest creatures you have known. You recognize them, don’t you?
Here is flight: suspended, perfect peace. Now the absence of the air you need. Now the desperate kick, up and out of its saving embrace.
Up to the surface. You can still see. Linger. Notice what shines as its holds you. Now back again, down. Down.
