stream
improvise then up and running
see
where it all leads to taking in all
manner of detritus sifting
discarding
selecting but working through for all
it's worth options and sluices open
beyond all catching a
glimpse of reasonable
blue-green
possibilities doubt
nothing's
that certain convictions
a farce a form of words (clouds?)
hold on just here for the ride
taken in carried along
and if we're lucky getting
somewhere leaving behind
such a mess no time to fuss
travelogue
places stations
just passing through always
on the move
***
miles to go and then the storm
that caught us by surprise
remember
how we sat it out
how the rain
blanked out the mountains
how while we were away
the landscape changed completely
cutting off our retreat
the waterlogged engine
forced us to change our plans
nothing for it but to take
what we could and head
for the high pass
leaving things behind
like clouds ripping softly among pines
•
where we set out from like a vivid
dream forgotten on awakening is the dream
less real than the awakening into
here and now where we'll be
years from now
•
heaving heaps of dark daring
to put a name to it
get beyond distance unbridgeable
by any stretch of the imagination
•
surrounded by a language
I wasn't born to I've mastered it
rather well but always
there's the hint of an accent
a misplaced intonation
that betrays
•
mirrors meetings
setting an edge
where we'd be no-
body just pure image
to be able to say this
is my hacceity
myself on the way
returning
•
knowing I've dreamt try to reenter
revisit stations I've passed through
finding them disjunctive like when I
try to say me the picture's cranky
slightly misty out of sync
as though
through thick glass like dreaming
I was here
but I was someone else the more
I try to see the more I recede
like looking through the shrinking end
of a telescope try to reenter
the dream it's gone
but I carry it
like a forgotten bus ticket at the bottom of my bag
•
which way now mapping the terrain
as I go
•
and there the meaning
that's eluded us a risky leap
away resplendent
teasing fata morgana
that's it light
glancing off the wing of a kingfisher
diving
anatomy
understanding the mechanics of say a smile
begins with the bones bones are
the body's grammar the rules
that hold it all together more or
less
unbendable getting harder as we get older
and more brittle an accidental fracture
or careless blow a fall like a split infinitive
resets and becomes the norm between
the official version and what the doctor sees
is a certain flexibility it's for those
always younger than us to see how far
bones will bend
but
bones alone
will not move cannot get themselves
to the top of the stairs they need the
body's
vocabulary nouns and verbs layers
of muscle tendons fat skin glands and organs
follicles hairs fingernails blood flowing
in a net of veins saliva sweat
the gap between the toes where dirt collects
thoughts made flesh but when
wounds heal the scars can change
meanings entirely and when
the language is forgotten it's just so much
meat on the slab
is
there any part
that can't be touched and broken
the mind perhaps that sets it all in motion
the idioms that articulate the flesh to move the bones
cleave the brain and still it can't be seen
there are
more suble ways than straightforward violence like
mass circulation to impose
and reinforce a dialect or bright lights
or locked and darkened rooms or simply
being alive in the twenty-first century and
so
getting back to what I was saying I
value
idiolect that particular turn of
phrase the way
you turn your head just so
when you smile
geography
1.
the old maps won't do
ditch-
water of the mind
2.
our landscapes rip
and crumple
and where are we?
3.
when we are most lost
we think
we know where we are
4.
boundaries confound
we're hard put
to see where they should be
5.
is the darkest place
in the middle
or right off the edge?
6.
it's a matter of scale
the closer you get
the more exact the lie
7.
from me to you
the shortest distance is
as the thought flies
© Catherine Hales 2003
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