from the crypt

i come home to you, the dying world that doesn't know it's dying, too busy being preoccupied with pushing flowers up through slots in the floorboards.

the world takes root, ii

a reflection, manitoulin island, september 2010

I am like someone digging through mist
in search of what slips away from mist,
having heard footsteps just further on
and words exchanged by passers-by ...

(from Into the Deep Street, philippe jaccottet)

the mirror in the ground, under the snow, like grain

A Stone

 

They loved that mirror

Whose frame, though chipping away, was still

Adorned with horns of plenty from the golden age.

Two dancing figures faced each other,

The shoulders and bellies were bare,

The hands

Touched, clasped one another,

But the eyes, it is true, did not meet.

 

They put

The mirror in the ground, under the snow,

Like grain; like the corn of heaven

That must rot for a long time in the mud of the world.

 

Yves Bonnefoy

 

from out of the silence many voices speak

every day is the day, or this is how we do it, or this is how it should be done, or his ear/her ear/our ear, or leaf/once leaf/always leaf, or did you hear the calves are being born, or here, now, almost gone, but here, now

looking up from my bed i discover, i'm here

"Nothing in experience led me to imagine
having.  Having is destroying, according
to my version of the vow of impoverishment.

But here, in this brief waxen light,
I have, and nothing is destroyed.  The flute
that guttered those owl's notes into the waste hours
of childhood joins with the piano
and they play, Being is having."

(from The Room, galway kinnell)