notes nearing an edge
the pressure to bear the witness asleep
at the wheel all of us far
from the valley
who becomes the river
start somewhere I meant to
listen I meant to
hear you as you left
the land I meant to record
at least your sands running out
take this—we say of the body—
the opening notes of each of us in turn
going fast act fast you have to give it
all away
what beyond there
And then in the hush, a shift
stops the pen, suddenly exhausted
by the weight of what preceded it.
There are not enough words
to make a wall between now
and what is lost. No sense
running for another stone
to prop up against the last
already threatening to give.
The only steps that matter now
are into a nonspace with no
road to lead you anywhere
and yet the only here
there is when you leave
that other one.
Here and now, unseen.
There are plenty of us floating around, unborn beginnings. We are translucent sacs, blooming bodies like the bells of see anemones. We pull substance into us and release, moving in a way reminiscent of flight but not birds, of flight but not planes, neither Icarus falling nor hero triumphant. We are the unrecorded.
Shapes, shifting
In one account, she is the wine-dark carrier of iron-laden sons to strange shores of inscrutable speech. Often, she swallows them whole. In another, she is moved by strong wind through the night to become a wall. Then she falls and swallows them whole.
The yet-to-be swallowed write of dreaded creatures in her waters, of her treacherous subtlety, and speculate that what she is keeping from them is surely a clue to their deaths.
When they get like this, she sighs another tide and wonders with a bright bloom of red, if any of these can remember beyond the tales of monsters and bewitchers, how once she beheld him from below where he stood, looking, and offered back to him the shine of his own face.
Addressing the observer.
I am not going to submit
to being recognized
or theorized,
but I will slow
here before you
somewhere between
what you see and think,
dressed in a fabric
you dreamed once
––when? about something
you strained to know.
You never knew
it, or me. But I
am here. And
you–––?
A conversation in the interim.
With the tides coming and going, finding the hidden treasure is often a matter of patience.
Which ocean?
This mind, or whatever you call it. There’s something I am trying to recover.
So now what?
Now I wait.
Hmm. It doesn’t look like you are doing anything.
Yeah. But remember those seeds we planted?
I love those trees! It’s amazing how they went from––
Yeah, but before all that, remember? After we planted, it looked like nothing. Root growth always does. But the tree won’t take if it doesn’t happen.
Wait. Is this about the ocean, or tree growth?
I’m mixing metaphors. It’s about learning to wait when you are trying to make a thing happen.
Got it. What’s happening now?
