Sunday, January 11, 2015

That Book by Merwin

Sometimes you come down to the stepping stones, and the fog is so thick the other side is just a guess, and you think about all the faith required to believe in something like the grocery store, or apples from New Zealand.

Sometimes the wind is cold on your face, and the tears come, and the grief comes with them.

Sometimes equations have many solutions, and sometimes none. Just because you've solved it doesn't mean you have the answer. It means there is at least one answer, that's all.

Sometimes a discomfort in the lats feels like swollen, diseased kidneys, and a backache is an intimation of death.

I did a massage in a crazy tower, like a treehouse, surrounded by stacks of books. The topmost one was a book of poems by Merwin. One of the skylights was not a skylight but a mirror, and the odd light in the sky was the nightlight by the baseboard, illuminating a little potted plant.

In the room below, a man was grower weaker, day by day, such that all rescheduling was tentative.

Sometimes everything is a door, the smooth skin of the belly or the rough skin of a palm. Everything opens in time. But sometimes your exit comes first.

I have not read that book by Merwin.

1 comment:

Kristen Burkholder said...

no one touches the heaven and pain of our work quite like you do Dale. Thank you.