envoi

What we once liked, we no longer like.
What we used to delight in settles like fine ash on our tongues.
What we once embraced embraces us.

Thing have destinies, of course,
On-lines and downloads mysterious as the language of clouds.
My life has become like that,

Half uninterpretable, half new geography,
Lanscapes stilled and adumbrated, memory unratcheting,
Its voice-over not my own.

Meanwhile, the mole goes on with it's subterranean daydream,
The dogs lie around like rugs,
Birds nitpick their pinfeathers, insects slick down their shells.

No horizon-honing here, no angst in the anthill.
What happens is what happens,
And what happened to happen never existed to start with.

Still, who wants a life like that,
No next and no before, no yesterday, no today,
Tomorrow a moment no one will live in?

As for me, I'll take whatever wanes,
The loosening traffic on the straightaway, the dark and such,
The wandering stars, wherever they come from now, wherever
they go.

I'll take whatever breaks down from it's own sad weight-
The paintings of Albert Pinkham Ryder, for instance,
Launguage, the weather, the word of God.

I'll take as icon and testament
The daytime metaphysics of the natural world,
Sun on tie post, rock on rock.

:Charles Wright 

:doug @ 6:03 AM