From Syllables (manuscript)
For Lyn Hejinian
sky tiered cherry views
ask the overcast for love
checker the rain back
(don’t foreclose meaning)
write to Lyn about Fall Creek
after she’s gone, or?
change the slope to up
insist upon the earth here
look revolve ions
*
From Lines (forthcoming book)
One of the epigraphs:
I am always conscious of the disquieting runs of life slipping
by, that the message remains undelivered, opposed to me . . .
It is impossible to carry light and darkness, proximity,
chance, movement, restlessness, and thought. From all of
these, something spills . . .
—Lyn Hejinian, Writing Is an Aid to Memory
*
February 27, 2020
The children were all in maps and rows
We held in our hands possibility in all colors
The sense of it was a journey into turquoise
Remainders of excess in a time of should-be rationing
The call of intent determined the energy
Some shock in the juncture surely as an eye
For tomorrow is another day we had not planned for
Today so insistent, so many demands
With its quirky timing, a hand in the mirror
Functioning alert or caught within an engine
Some other mounds of detection
See this little inch of freedom in which you sleep
(they want that)
The imagination is universal, in turtles
They have survived the dinosaurs, here with us in shells
*
From Author’s Note to Lines
When I began this book, I was thinking of Lyn Hejinian’s My Life (1980), and the frame of the number. In the first edition of that book, Lyn wrote 37 sections with 37 sentences each, in conjunction with her age at the time. I was drawn to the courage of the form, the decision to stay in the moment, to let language follow the pace of the mind.