“It is also good to sense
The wind die
and the boat move gravely
without it.”
Archive for September, 2008
Drifting
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008Approaching Prayer
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008by J. Dickey
A moment tries to come in
Through the windows, when one must go
Beyond what there is in the room,
But it must come straight and down.
Lord, it is time,
And I must get up and start
To circle through my father’s empty house
…
Something goes through me
Like an accident, a
negligent glance,
Like the explosion of a star
…
Vertebrae — a body’s exhibit
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008What is this vertebrae doing, gone missing? It should be inside someone, not outside someone, sitting on a table like a little amoeba-sculpture, looking like bleached driftwood, hollow as a flute with spaces big enough for a finger, a spiky St Marks ring made of opaque glass or dried sea sponge. I am holding it on my pinkie finger, wearing someone else’s bone on my bones, a bangle, an accessory, it must have been more than an accessory to somebody, it must have been essential.
What happens when a vertebrae goes missing inside a body? I am thinking of my own vertebrae , nestled in my lower back, that slipped one day, oozing out disc fluid like a jelly donut. Maybe the vertebrae was knocking around loose like this one, an over-cracked agitated knuckle. Forgotten until misplaced, swelling flesh and hitting nerves, lighting them up with electricity – spark plugs, a vertebrae is a spark plug.
Or a little home for something very small. Its curves are beautiful and seem to make sense. I imagine it a shrunken home by the sea with fluid waves in its walls, a home for other things that need homes – like disc jelly or sea weed or nomads looking to nestle for the night.
water
Monday, September 1st, 2008searching daylight for a face.
closing my eyes
and hearing my heart
soon it comes
the calm beginning
of some kind of
home
simple.
i run ahead of myself
and into a little house of soul
who is it?
which way out is the sea?
lighted in a new shape
the sand
yes. it is dark
and a young body is in the waves
turning over alive with watery noise
i was always
in the water
the monotony of water
the closest thing to heaven
i shed my clothes my flesh cannot hide
the night teaches me a little
the sea plays along my back, the folds of my skin
there we stayed until shadows mirrored rivers
and there was no more song.
someday i won’t miss you anymore.
