this is precisely how far we can see

well, maybe not precisely

portrait of yearning

 

 

from: clear night by charles wright

 

i want to be bruised by god.

i want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.

i want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.

i want to be entered and picked clean.

do you understand, this has nothing to do with the body?  do you understand, this is because of the body?  do you understand, it is between me and that which i move toward?  do you understand, this is our condition? 

do you understand, these are not questions.

the complicated relationships of mothers and daughters

river and light

are you looking for the perfect moment?  are you looking for the perfect anything?  perfect is perfect and everything is perfect and nothing.  what does perfect mean?  you torment yourself with perfect.  you have a yoke between you and your language and yet the word is innocent.  the yoke is your own violent making, the conjunction between mind and being, a bastardized yearning that hooks all words impossibly back toward themselves, but words are empty spaces meant only to be held as gentle hands.

unhook the yoke.  look for nothing.  there - now - breathe.

gifts

here, mom, he says, after scampering over cold rocks in an icy wind.  he knows there is something important here, something that almost makes no sense yet does.  our hands ache because of the cold.  i mean, we really ache, we struggle and yet the flowers are enduring and delicate.  i put them to my mouth, my nose.  do they smell, he asks.  oh, i forgot to smell them.  i was only touching their softness.  no, i say, breathing in deeply now with intention, i don't think so.  wait - perhaps?  the wind whips us and the flowers.  the world is too raw and abrupt this day to release the flower's sweet scent but that doesn't mean it's not there.

later he stuffs a feather into my sleeve and runs off over the rocks toward autumn's rough water.  please, tell me he will always always know the value of flowers in an icy cove and feathers stuffed into the sleeve.

whosoever thought of such a foolish notion as ending

there is no such thing.  do not weep for the struggling seedling; don't worry for the tree; rejoice in the fall of leaves.  today this year's first snowflakes fall, by far not the first, nor the last.  free yourself and know eternity.

existence, part x

blow on the glass. rub. 

 

breath - both cleansing and obscuring.

there is something here, i insist.

lean closer. 

mark the congruences.  notice the inconsistencies. 

be astounded by the possibilities - life tied up in such trembling sacs. 

life.  man. whole stories spanning decades and impossible complexities.

breathe again. 
the glass opaque.  the image almost gone.

 

begin again.

blow on the glass.  rub.

breath - both cleansing and obscuring.

there is something here, i insist.

lean closer.