”Imagination, as it were, abstracts from thisness.” Jan Zwicky, WISDOM AND METAPHOR, #64
work-in-progress
Winter wandering
between snowfalls discovers
the whites. At the cove
idle pleasure craft
are tarped and shuttered, blinding
under broken clouds.
Amidst mottled ducks,
Canada geese form white forms
in our streaming eyes.
In a cluttered mind
a walk in the snow reveals
the good of walking.
The cove after snow
had polished the light and left
the sky, met my eye
with a candid stare.
I had to look more than once
for duck one to show
making no waves; duck
two, I had to squint to see
sitting still on a post
where a boat should be
tied up. To pay attention
is a form of love.
.
work-in-progress
Night thickens, it seems.
The silence deepens, it seems.
I stare at the dark.
At some point, it seems,
the thickness and silence will
start to show in snow.
In passing carlights,
one by one, between my dreams,
I will see it go.
.
I look forward to
snow. Snow’s full of surprises.
The world starts to flow.
Without snow, winter
is just more of the same-old.
Hard ground, bare trees, sky.
I’m out of patience
with sky. Filled with snow, sky has
tricks up its long sleeves.
”In the between we are thrown down, but also thrown above, being thrown above the between. Hence the suggestion that the hyperboles communicate more than the terms of immanence can circumscribe.” William Desmond, The Voiding of Being (2020), XXX
work-in-progress
The impossible
blue of the Bay this winter
day, the purity
of the bottom of
a flame. Nobody out to
see gold-tipped cord grass,
ducks in the distance.
Light a match and you
will see this blue, but not
the inscape of cold,
not cloudless skies o-
pen to depths of ultramarine
hyperbolic blue.
”Love demands eternity because it can never finish telling itself the excess within it of intuition over signification.” Jean-Luc Marion, quoted by Desmond, The Voiding of Being (2020), 217.
Work-in-progress
Record-breaking cold.
The publican lends me an
abandoned hoodie—
an extra layer.
The cove is empty, cement
gray. Just going out to see,
the walking habit,
sustains me now. I look twice—
a duck splashes down.
Philosophical
talk fails to communicate
the broken silence.
”Or, as Robert Bringhurst has noted, you can walk the path where seizures have been known to occur, but you can’t make poetry happen to you.” Jan Zwicky, The Experience of Meaning, 31.
work-in-progress
Above timberline
as a child I learned to sit
as still as a stone.
I imagined wild
things would take me for granted,
a kind of nothing.
A one-way conver-
sation. The wild expresses
itself without words.
A lizard breathing
on the granite outcrop made
me so self-conscious.
work-in-progress
It’s January
1, New Year’s Day. The Bay
is covered in mist.
There’s no horizon.
But it’s mild and joggers jog
by and lovers rest
and look at the Bay.
I too love mild, misty days,
and the geese calling.
We children on New
Year’s Eve would watch TV — the
big bands in New York,
wherever that was.
They danced under the big lights.
I’d had enough and
at midnight I’d go
outside. The desert air was
clear and full of stars
yet light years away.
I watched as they danced and was
pierced by the distance.
I pass people by
as I wander, and say Hi;
sometimes they reply.
I know their faces
no better than they know mine.
We pass. Some pass a-
way, yet haunt the road.
Wandering may have no goal
beyond our faces.
Metaxyturn Diaries 