June 30, 2011
An Uncertain Green
Spring, and the discovery that my coat was ten sizes too large. I knew the different rooms of it. A cavern of wet wool in rain. For months, there under a bridge, I could raise my arm from water and drink at my own breast.
I built nests for birds and waited, on into summer. A wasp examined one made of chopsticks and watermelon rind. A possum peered into the tangle of licorice and bright finishing nails. Then a mockingbird settled in a china cup set in a cat’s ribcage. I fought sleep.
A windy, no-thought day. Calculated my heart rate by barest touch of teeth. The city employed its vehicles in miniature vistas. A man came with the mood of one checking on some report of me. A patch covering one eye; his other gazing as a whale would a moment before slipping below. He must have seen no cause.
How then to populate a day with color, in rain, without bringing a bowl for the fire of it? The sea at this city’s edge marks a kind of hollow, always seeming to say we should be amazed by any dry land. The sharks at the aquarium rasp their gray skins against my sense of water, watching a vision of watchers. So, bird, come to my eye beak first—swim into me, find that avenue that falls through autumn to black bones where perch the reasons.
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My god, Daryl. This is amazing.
Good god. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Oh, Daryl, I so admire you. “So, bird, come to my eye beak first…” You wreck me every time.
Beautiful.
Thank you my dears. You all sustain me with your kind words.
I have read this a dozen times, and it only grows in beauty and power.
What’s so amazing to me is that I know all of the mechanics that went into this. Seen it in bits and pieces. Heard it read in slightly different forms. Know what the aims were, know where the title comes from. I “know” as much as can be known of the workings of it. And yet this work transcends everything I could possibly know–about it or anything in the world.
Daryl! Thank you. So…it’s more than I can say.
Thank you, Daryl.