This involves more than just the water standing
in the open field like an extended gasp,
or the one cloud drifting
toward a horizon I would never have imagined
so black, -did I say red cloud?-or the newly-felled
tree’s split membrane pulsing in the summerlight.
And it’s not just the crops in a row like reasons,
either, that are responsible for this attitude,
although, paradoxically, that’s what I’ve put down.
Sometimes I think it’s the difficult matter of the heart.
Sometimes it could be almost anything except
what I’ve mentioned. All those things I decided against.
Perennial beauty. The dream of moss. So much silence
wasted on us. This is the best place for it.
At least one mile is the distance between
the waiting weather and where you stand, at any moment.
And the question you’d be asking yourself here
is of the possibility for a better life, for greater desire,
though that is obscure, and the feeling of taking part.
The sad gulf that opens in the blood, like a window.
Later, the moon and stars would rise
like boats diverging on a bay
even then you wouldn’t know what it means.
Unlike the stars, you would lose your breath,
you could hear your heart skipping stones,
and the memory of someone who once said:
“your affections are seditious.”
There are always sounds here. And small birds
that are learning to become chords
as if the immense wind were not enough relief,
extolling in the leaves which so often surround us.
Between you and me is an empty gesture,
I only recently understood that. And that gesture
has me sitting here sorry about this piece of paper
which doesn’t take into account the difficulty
of a street, a street repeatedly unconcerned with questions
of faith, or men on the move. I don’t know what to say
there are so many personal moments effaced in this light.
It’s like this: dead insects blow across the floor.
They have never forgotten.
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