looking into the well: pessimism and hope

imagine a deep well.  deep and dark, a surface world of dark water, unmoving as it mirrors: a circular piece of sky, clouds, a moon, a firefly, a hint of shimmering light.  

imagine what lies beneath the waters stone cold.  imagine what lies underneath the ground.  imagine the pull, the calling, the fall.  

sometimes

in unguarded moments, we see ourselves, looking up at us from down the well.

to believe again

the exact moment of your coming of age, do you remember? the moment when 
the rosy scales from your eyes fell
and your heart grew a stone
and you finally see

the world is not what you once thought it to be?



                                                                   --on reading college freshmen essays

the roles we play

Linda, who said she can't leave New York there's just so much theater there, said I see her when I could, when she's back, there, or here, or wherever it is she is referring to, as home.  

She said why do I not leave this place.  I said why do you return.  I did not ask do you feel like a stranger here?  I do.  Every time I return, the place has something new.  And I get lost:  the streets

have a habit of changing names.  The landmarks have the habit of changing faces.  Old places disappear, always something new.  When I first saw Linda, she was not 

the picture of the name in mind.  She was otherwise; and warm and bubbly; meticulous about each step of the process.  I was not surprised.  Long years in the theater have a way of creeping

itself into the skin.  In a workshop she tells the participants the cliche among us they may not yet know:  we're all actors playing our lives in roles.  Linda says we are friends, we are lovers, we are

wives, we are children, we are mothers.  One time she whispered I am feeling cold: I think I might be sick.  She asked for a pill and I gave her a glass of lukewarm water with it.  She curled herself 

on the couch, like a fetus.  I turned off the lights and closed the door.
What are we when we are alone?  What role do we play in front of the wall?

a piece of thought in motion

in the middle of writing a post on the concept of line as ****, IT dawned: the ground concept on which to build the reading on ***.  for some months now, the enthusiasm to write about this series has been hibernating; but, until now, there was no particular seed with which to germinate the entire articulation.  also, there were, and still are, too many things on the calendar.  too many projects and legwork necessary.  the near-unbelievable paperwork and the meetings and post-conferences, including the working-dinners over which the more important and sensitive matters are discussed while couched in the trivial act of eating.  i want to mention this concept of the line right now (such is my excitement), but one must not get ahead of things.  i am looking at the clock---as i have the habit of removing my wristwatch, like keeping the phone away, when i intend to have a "breather"---and it says two hours before the need to leave for work.  today, as wednesdays should've been, would have been a writing day; except, for weeks now there has been no writing days.  for instance, two meetings are scheduled this afternoon...i wish to write again through hours that seem to stretch the day and the sunlight; but it is difficult to sit down and keep still to call the thoughts into form, into a piece of infinity entry, in the middle of a deluge.  
 

under a tree

to understand is to stand under
stand under a canopy
of something

bench at the park by the river

how does a conversation between two humans in their bodies begin?
in awkwardness and in pretension.
pretend the body does not matter.
nor the face.  the length and color of hair, of eyes, of skin.
the kind of smile, the crow's feet around the eyes, the even-ness
of teeth, the lips, the lobes of ear, curve of neck, sound of voice.

in conversation, the two humans list on walls of air
their life's achievements:  the various ways they have survived
the onslaught of years;  the ways they have carried on
all the weight of accumulated disbelief; all the personal
histories seen, felt, or otherwise.  how the body
tends to hide behind the eyes.

if the conversation is long enough, it ends with coffee
together with a hundred other things known
on how to keep bodies afloat on the surface.
 
if the conversation is not enough, the two humans, body-less,
stay on the bench at the park by the river
souls talking to each other, both facing the waters.

on questions with no answers

1.

this business with poetry.  almost no wonder why 
poets were sent away from the republic.
all questioning that could, on any day, be meant
to mean subverting  what has been 
a long held belief.  e.g. the world is flat. 


2.

this city is connected to the others by two steel bridges.
mornings and evenings, people fall into long, long, long lines:
all in a hurry to leave at first light
all in a hurry to return by dusk fall.
they all curse under their breaths in between.


3.

in poetry reading class, the students' thoughts
are thick like fabric.  the professor has opened
a window, has let something in: 
postmodernism:  a poem in footnote form;
gender theory:  a poem on the satire of normative roles;
philosophy:  a poem on memory's palimpsestic quality.

the students' thoughts
clutch their bibles, reciting verses.

not one of them has ever seen a firefly.